Simone Young has been Artistic Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Chief Music Director of the Hamburg Philharmonic since August 2005. She has conducted here a broad musical spectrum of premieres and repertoire performances ranging from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss to Hindemith, Britten and Henze. At the State Opera and with the Hamburg Philharmonic, she has been able to achieve great successes with world premieres and several German premieres. Simone Young has made an international name for herself as a Wagner conductor: she was music director of several complete cycles of the Ring of the Nibelung at the Vienna State Opera and the State Opera Unter den Linden in Berlin. She forged her own Ring with great success at the Hamburg State Opera, conducting the complete cycle here as well. Engagements led the Sydney-born conductor to all the leading opera houses of the world, including the Vienna State Opera, the Opéra National de Paris, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Bavarian State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Los Angeles Opera. Alongside her extensive operatic activities, Simone Young has also made a name for herself on the concert podium. She has worked with all the leading orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Simone Young directed the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra as Principal Conductor from 1999 until 2002 and was Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Australian Opera in Sydney and Melbourne from January 2001 until December 2003. From 2007 until 2013 she also was Principal Guest Conductor of the Lisbon Gulbenkian Orchestra.

Simone Young appears on numerous recordings. For example, alongside recordings from the Hamburg State Opera such as Mathis der Maler, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung on OehmsClassics, there are also several recordings with the Hamburg Philharmonic. Among others, ten Bruckner symphonies have been issued as well as the Second and the Sixth Symphony of Gustav Mahler and the symphonies of Johannes Brahms.

Simone Young has received numerous prizes and awards. She is an honorary doctor of the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, Professor at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hamburg, a member of the Order of Australia and a “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” as well as a recipient of the Goethe Medal. She was honoured as “Conductor of the Year” for her first opera season in Hamburg, and also received the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Prize. In 2009, together with the Hamburg Philharmonic, she made the Hanseatic City into the world’s largest concert hall – from the Michel Tower, she conducted 100 musicians at 50 locations throughout the city.

In 2012 Simone Young, the Hamburg Philharmonic and soloists of the Hamburg State Opera presented Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Mahler’s Second Symphony in Brisbane, Australia, for which Young received the Helpmann Award in the category of “Best Individual Classical Music Performance” in 2013.

Translation: David Babcock

Bruckner’s 200th anniversary: Interview with Simone Young on Symphony No. 6 (Gramophone)