Joana Mallwitz

Joana Mallwitz has been appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, effective August 2023, making her the first woman to lead a major Berlin orchestra. Since her debut at the 2020 Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic, she has become one of the most internationally sought-after conductors of her generation. In the 2023/24 season, she will make her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and appear in symphony concerts with both the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic. From 2018 to 2023, she was General Music Director at the Nuremberg State Theater and was named “Conductor of the Year” in the 2019 critics' survey conducted by Opernwelt magazine. In recent years, she has made guest appearances at leading opera houses and theaters, including the Staatsoper Berlin, the Royal Opera House London, the Bayerische Staatsoper and the Opernhaus Zürich. Her major engagements also include the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. Mallwitz began her career as a Kapellmeister at the Theater Heidelberg and took up her first directorial position in 2014/15 as the youngest general music director in Europe at the Theater Erfurt. There she developed the “Expedition Concerts”, an innovative format for music education that she later brought to Nuremberg and Berlin. Born in Hildesheim, she studied conducting and piano at the University of Music, Drama and Media Hanover.