Chief conductor Martin Kerschbaum

Martin Kerschbaum – Conductor
Austrian-born Martin Kerschbaum studied music in Vienna and then joined the Vienna
Symphony Orchestra as an orchestra musician, an experience that has certainly informed his
work as a conductor.
Kerschbaum began his conducting career with concerts in Italy, Germany and Austria. His
performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra was praised as
the discovery of the evening by the music critic of the Austrian daily Die Presse.
Career highlights career include a program entitled Mozart and the Turks (a contribution to
Vienna’s 2006 official Mozart Year), which he staged together with his Vienna Classical
Players orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the double CD recording of Mozart’s
concertos for violin and orchestra with soloist Rainer Honeck for the Orfeo International
label. Kerschbaum’s recording of Karl Komzák’s Badner Mad’ln waltz, again with the
Vienna Classical Players, on a CD of rarities from the Strauß era (Reutterer Music label) was
voted one of the world’s top 40 Classical music interpretations on Nokia’s music platform in
2006.
The conductor recorded CDs covering the complete series of Haydn’s cello concertos in
June 2008, Mendelssohn’s violin concerto and concerto for piano and violin in 2009, and
Dvořák’s cello concerto in 2010. In the same year, he also recorded Franz Danzi’s Cello
Concerto in E minor to great acclaim. Moreover, Kerschbaum has staged concerts with
special themes for the Feldkirch Festival and the Wiener Festwochen.
Since 2008, he has regularly toured Germany and Scandinavia for several weeks with the
K&K Philharmoniker. On the occasion of the Tyrolean Beethoven Days in Thiersee in 2009,
he also conducted a much-applauded guest concert of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with this
orchestra.
In August 2009, Kerschbaum made his first appearance at the Bregenz Festival at a large
open air concert. In 2010, he returned to conduct a concert of works by Johannes Maria Staud
as part of the “Art of Our Times” program. In 2010, on invitation of Maestro Fedoseyev, the
conductor made his Moscow debut with the renowned Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra
playing works by Haydn and Mozart under his baton. He was immediately invited to return in
the 2012 season. Additionally, Kerschbaum debuted with the Orquesta de Córdoba in Spain
and with the WDR Rundfunkorchester Cologne in 2010.
Martin Kerschbaum has been the chief conductor of the Vienna Classical Players orchestra
since 2003. Tours with this chamber orchestra have taken him to Malta, Italy, Germany and
Turkey in recent years, and to numerous musical events in and around Austria, such as the
Haydnfestspiele in Eisenstadt (Burgenland), the Weinklang Festival Raiding (Burgenland),
the Landecker Musikwochen (Tyrol), and to Pécs in Hungary, the European Capital of
Culture in 2010.
Guest conductorships and tours have taken Kerschbaum to Japan, Germany, Italy, France,
Poland, Malta, San Marino, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Switzerland,Turkey, and the U.S.A. Martin
Kerschbaum has also conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Tchaikovsky
Symphony Orchestra of Moscow, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra,
the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, the Tonkünstler-
Orchester Niederösterreich, the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, the Oldenburgische
Staatsorchester, the Orquesta de Córdoba, the Wiener Concert-Verein, the orchestra of the
Bad Ischl Operetta Festival, the Badener Städtisches Orchester, the Belluno Chamber
Orchestra, the Wieniawski Lublin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tampa West Coast Orchestra,
the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, the Filharmonia Koszalin´ska, the Sarajevo Philhamonic
Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Malta, and the orchestra of the Almaty Opera.

Conductor
Martin Kerschbaum