WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln

The WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln (or "West German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Cologne") is one of Germany's leading symphony orchestras. The group plays the music of various periods but has specialized in contemporary music, a specialty made possible by the fact that the WDR network also maintains another orchestra, the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln, that performs lighter music and pops material. The WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln's recording catalog stretches back to the early LP era, but the group has been exceptionally prolific in the 21st century, often releasing several albums annually. By April of 2025, the group had already issued four albums that year on three different labels; one of those was Mozart's Journey to Paris on Hänssler Classic, with violinist Tobias Feldmann. The broadcast of orchestral music on the radio in Cologne dates back almost to the foundation of the Richessender Köln radio station in 1927. After World War II, Allied administrators announced the breakup of the central broadcasting of the Nazi era in favor of a system of regional broadcasters that persists today. The Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester was established to serve the new Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (Northwest German Radio) in 1947; the name was changed to WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln in the 1990s. In the beginning, the group hosted only guest conductors, but since 1964, when Christoph von Dohnányi was named principal conductor, the orchestra has reliably spawned international conducting careers. Recent principal conductors have included Hans Vonk (1991-1997), Semyon Bychkov (1997-2010), Jukka-Pekka Saraste (2010-2019), and, since 2019, Cristian Măcelaru. Marie Jacquot will become the first female principal conductor in 2026, with Măcelaru staying on as Artistic Partner. Guest conductors have included international greats -- Herbert von Karajan, Karl Böhm, and Zubin Mehta, among others. The orchestra performs at the WDR Funkhaus Wallrafplatz and the Kölner Philharmonie. An early recording was made in 1958, featuring conductor Otto Klemperer leading the group in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125. The orchestra's contemporary music specialty dates back many years and has included premieres of works by Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. This tendency, along with the WDR's maintenance of its own electronic music studio directed for many years by Stockhausen, helped to establish Cologne as a center for contemporary music. The orchestra performs at the WDR Funkhaus Wallrafplatz and the Kölner Philharmonie. The orchestra has also recorded for Wergo, Audite, CPO, and many others. The WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln has recorded for both German and international labels. In 1989, under frequent guest conductor Günter Wand, the orchestra released recordings of Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 ("The Great"), and Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 on RCA Red Seal. Although quite prolific, with well over 100 recordings to its credit as of the mid-2020s, the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln has not been strongly associated with any single imprint. In 2020, the group released its first two albums on Sony Classical, Beethoven's World, and a release devoted to the violin concertos of Franz Joseph Clement, with violinist Mirijam Contzen and conductor Reinhard Goebel. The WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln bounced back quickly from the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing six recordings in 2023 alone, including the first volume of a cycle of the complete symphonic works of Grażyna Bacewicz on the CPO label. In 2025, the orchestra issued two more albums in that cycle, the album Mozart's Journey to Paris, and Rachmaninov: Orchestral Works, with all of those appearing by mid-April. ~ James Manheim, Rovi