Bochumer Symphoniker

Germany's Bochum Symphony Orchestra (German: Bochumer Symphoniker) is a major ensemble of the industrial Ruhr Valley region. It has grown steadily in both size and reach since its reestablishment following World War II. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Bochum Symphony has amassed a substantial recording catalog. In 2025, it was heard on a recording of George Antheil's opera Venus in Africa on the CPO label. The Bochum Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1918 as the Municipal Orchestra of Bochum and was intended at first as a backing ensemble for operas and theater productions at the city's Schauspielhaus theater. It began to give public concerts of its own in 1919 and gained some regional renown in the 1920s and '30s. The orchestra's operations were suspended in September 1944 but resumed informally in July 1945, just two months after Germany's surrender. Paul Hindemith conducted the orchestra in a 1955 appearance at the opening of the rebuilt Schauspielhaus, and the orchestra appeared at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. By the late '60s, the orchestra had a full-size complement of 80 members and had been renamed the Bochum Symphony Orchestra. By the late '70s, conductor Othmar Mága was leading the group in a regular schedule of 75 concerts a year. The year 1991 saw the opening of the orchestra's new Bochum Jahrhunderthalle venue. Three years later, conductor Steven Sloane took up the baton; he succeeded in bringing in new audiences locally, raising the orchestra's international profile, and entering the recording market with the album Joseph Marx: The Nature Trilogy on the Naxos label. Several more albums were devoted to Marx's music. The first goal was accomplished partly through crossover projects involving rock stars Ian Anderson and Sting, harmony vocal group Take 6, and vocalist and actor Herbert Grönemeyer, who headlined a show at the city's Ruhrstadion that drew a sellout crowd of 29,000. The orchestra toured the U.S., Estonia, and Israel and began performing with the newly established Bochum Philharmonic Choir. Another new orchestra hall, the Anneliese Brost Music Forum Ruhr, opened in 2016. Sloane led the orchestra in several recordings on the Naxos label, including a group devoted to Marx. In 2021, he was replaced by conductor Tung-Chieh Chuang. Sloane continued to appear on Bochum Symphony recordings in the early and mid-2020s, including a pair on CPO covering the orchestral works of Franz Schreker and, in 2025, one of George Antheil's rarely heard opera Venus in Africa. ~ James Manheim, Rovi