Anja Bihlmaier

Anja Bihlmaier’s musical intuition, inspirational charisma and her ability to combine passion with precision has made her one of the leading female conductors of her generation. She has been the chief conductor of the Residentie Orkest The Hague since August 2021 and was appointed as first guest conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in September 2024. During the season 2024/2025 she will be conducting the Munich Philharmonic, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Göteborg Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Toronto Symphony as well as the Spanish National Orchestra and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia. She returns to the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin to conduct Mahler’s 9th Symphony and will be accompanying the Residentie Orkest to Bonn where her three-year residency at the Beethoven Festival commences. In June 2025, she will be conducting “Cassandra” by the Belgian composer Bernard Foccroulle at the Staatsoper Berlin.

Following her BBC Proms debut in 2023, she returned to the festival in 2024 with a new concert conducting the BBC Philharmonic and also a production of Carmen at the main section of the Glyndebourne Festival in August. Among her most spectacular debuts during the previous season were undertaken with orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Wiener Symphoniker, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, National Symphony Orchestra Washington, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and at the Salzburg Mozart Week. Anja Bihlmaier has an extensive repertoire ranging from Haydn, Mahler, Strauss and Bernd Alois Zimmermann to Sibelius, Bartók, Dvořák, Shostakovich, Debussy, Britten, Galina Ustvolskaya and Unsuk Chin. As a keen conductor of opera, she gained experience within this field in posts at the Staatsoper Hannover, the Theater Chemnitz, the Staatstheater Kassel and as a guest conductor at the Vienna State Opera and across Scandinavian countries including Malmö (“Midsummer Night’s Dream”), Trondheim (“Faust”), Tampere (“Flying Dutchman”) and Oslo (“La Traviata”). After her studies at the Freiburg University of Music with Scott Sandmeier, Anja Bihlmaier was awarded a scholarship for the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and broadened her knowledge with Dennis Russell Davies and Jorge Rotter. She was subsequently admitted to the Conducting Forum and received a scholarship from the Baden-Baden Brahms Society.