The American conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser was born in New York and is a graduate of the city’s High School of Music and Art.

He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory and a Diploma from the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria following three successive Fulbright scholarship grants. He was also awarded the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Widener University.

Gunzenhauser served both Igor Markevich in Monte Carlo and Leopold Stokowski in New York before becoming executive and artistic director of the Wilmington Music School in 1974.

In 1979, Stephen Gunzenhauser was appointed conductor and music director of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. Mr Gunzenhauser is also conductor and music director of Lancaster Symphony in Pennsylvania.

The state of Delaware appointed Stephen Gunzenhauser to be the state’s First Cultural Ambassador in 1990. In December 1999, Stephen Gunzenhauser was presented with the Order of the First State, the highest accolade awarded by the Delaware state government.

He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA with his wife and two daughters.

Stephen Gunzenhauser is a prolific recording artist and has sold over two million discs. For Naxos he has recorded some of the label’s most successful and bestselling titles including symphonic works and concertos by Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Bruch, Orff, Borodin, Dvořák, Rachmaninov, Copland, Goldmark, Paganini and Prokofiev. For Marco Polo he has been hardly less prolific with recordings of music by Liadov, Gliere, Dvořák, Rubinstein, Lachner, Taneyev and the Chinese composer Chen Gang.