Thomas Hengelbrock was born in 1958 in Wilhelmshaven and studied violin with Conrad von der Goltz and Rainer Kussmaul at the Würzburg and Freiburg music schools. In 1980 he became concert master of the German Youth Philharmonic; he subsequently performed with the Concentus Musicus Wien. In 1985 Thomas Hengelbrock became one of the cofounders of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, and in 1991 he founded the Balthasar Neumann Choir and in 1995 the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble. Between 1995 and 1998 he served as artistic director of the German Chamber Philharmonic in Bremen, between 2000 and 2003 he was music director of the Vienna Volksoper, and in 2001 he founded the Feldkirch Festival, which he directed until 2006. As an opera conductor, Hengelbrock has presided over numerous productions at the Schwetzingen Festival, dedicating himself in particular to baroque music theater and to Mozart. His operatic repertoire, which he has performed in Baden Baden, at the Paris Opéra, at the Royal Opera House in London, and elsewhere, also ranges from works by Verdi and Bellini and modern classics such as Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress to musicals like Bernstein’s West Side Story and modernist works such as Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero. Thomas Hengelbrock has also been a stage director. He designed and directed Purcell’s King Arthur at the Ruhr Triennal, Mozart’s Il re pastore at the Sazlburg Festival, and Don Giovanni at the Feldkirch Festival. In the concert hall he has led the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the North German Radio Symphony Orchesra, and the Munich Philharmonic. Hengelbrock regularly engages in interdisciplinary projects involving theater, literature, and dance; his model for this is the German architect of the baroque, Balthasar Neumann, who sought a synthesis of the arts through his closely linked constructions of architecture, painting, sculpture, and gardens.
One previous appearance at the LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF), on March 19, 1997, with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and the Balthasar Neumann Choir in works by Emmanuele Rincon d’Astorga and Antonio Lotti.