Marc Albrecht

Conductor Marc Albrecht has specialized in the late German and Austrian Romanticism of Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Alexander Zemlinsky, but he has an extensive repertory in both opera and orchestral music. Albrecht was born in Hannover, West Germany, in 1964. His father was George Alexander Albrecht, music director of the Niedersächsisches Staatstheater Hannover, and his mother, Corinne, was a former ballet dancer. Albrecht's father gave him his first lessons; other important mentors were Claudio Abbado, whom he served as an assistant at the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and the unrelated Gerd Albrecht, with whom he worked at the Hamburg Staatsoper. Marc Albrecht's first major post was as the music director of the Staatstheater Darmstadt, from 1995 to 2001. He also served early in his career as the guest conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2005, Albrecht became the chief conductor and artistic director of the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra in France, remaining there until 2011. He made his first appearance at the Dutch National Opera in 2008, conducting Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten, and the following year, he was named the conductor of that company, as well as of the Netherlands Philharmonic and Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. He remained in these posts until the 2019-2020 season when he announced his intention to resign from all three. Albrecht had already begun to make frequent guest appearances around Europe and increasingly in the U.S. by that time, and on his calendar for the 2019-2020 season were guest conducting slots in London (at the BBC Proms), Weimar, and Seattle. Albrecht's recording career began in 2008 with an album of Strauss tone poems with the Strasbourg Philharmonic on the PentaTone label. He has made several operatic recordings for Challenge Classics, including one of a contemporary work, Manfred Trojahn's Orest, in 2014. In 2020, he released a recording of Zemlinsky's rarely heard tone poem Die Seejungfrau with the Netherlands Philharmonic on PentaTone. ~ James Manheim