Spotlight | Music Director

Matthias Pintscher

Matthias Pintscher is the newly appointed Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony (KCS) as of the 2024-25 season, which he launched with a highly successful tour with the orchestra to Europe just before opening the season in Kansas City, with concerts at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonie, and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.

Highlights of the 2025-26 season include the world premiere of Pintscher’s new opera Das kalte Herz by the Berlin State Opera, which he composed and will conduct, and will reprise in a French version titled Nuit sans aube at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in the same season. He returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and will be in his sixth year as Creative Partner at the Cincinnati Symphony.

Pintscher was formerly the Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and has held several titled positions, including nine seasons as BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Artist-in-Association, Principal Conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, Music Director for the 2020 Ojai Festival, and as Season Creative Chair with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich.

Pintscher is also well known as a composer. His music is championed by some of today’s finest performing artists, orchestras, and conductors, and has been performed by the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris, among many others.

Matthias Pintscher is published by Boosey and Hawkes: works written before 2023 are published by Baerenreiter. Recordings of his works can be found on Kairos, EMI, Teldec, Wergo, and Winter & Winter.