Conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher (courtesy of Ensemble Intercontemporain © Franck Ferville)
He comes to the orchestra with a wealth of experience, inspiration and global connections, as well as dreams for the future
As the new music director for the Kansas City Symphony, conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher is stepping onto the podium of an orchestra poised to step up, too. Already, he’s organized a European tour (the orchestra’s first), new concert formats and an exciting line-up of repertoire and guest artists.
Pintscher was introduced to the press at an event at the Helzberg House in March, when he and KCS president and CEO Danny Beckley discussed the events they had devised for Pintscher’s inaugural season.
Much has been made of the “instant connection” between Pintscher and the orchestra, precipitating the rapid progression from guest conductor to music director-elect, but that connection seemed to extend to the city itself. When Pintscher arrived the evening before his first rehearsal in February 2023, he was greeted by exuberant airport employees and was struck by their friendliness. What he didn’t know at the time was that he had flown in on one of the first flights to the new Kansas City International Airport.
“The city has given me such a friendly and warm and curious welcome that it was a no-brainer for me,” said Pintscher.
He has served in many capacities in the classical music world, including high-profile positions as music director of Ensemble Intercontemporain, principal conductor at the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, artist-in-association for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, music director of Ojai Festival, artist-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Creative Partner with the Cincinnati Symphony, among other appointments.
Along with those responsibilities, Pintscher has conducted the New World Orchestra many times through the years, and many in KCS are alumni of the organization. It was a “wonderful thing,” he said, to see so many familiar faces.
He had programmed demanding repertoire, including György Ligeti’s sonically challenging “San Francisco Polyphony,” and his direct and calm manner brought out the best in the musicians.
“It really felt like we had seen each other many times before and known each other for a long time. And there was no walking on eggshells, no strategy, no expectation,” said Pintscher.
And though he’s conducted all over the world, including Berliner Staatsoper, Barcelona Symphony, La Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (and many others), this is his first “big” job with an American orchestra, that he called, “one of the finest orchestras in the country.”
“You get me fresh, because I haven’t done it before in five other places,” he said.
Roots in Germany, Hungarian Influences
Kansas City may seem an odd place for this globe-trotting cosmopolitan, but the location also reflects his roots, growing up in Marl, a semi-rural town in Germany, what he called the “Midwest of his country” (Marl’s population is on par with that of Lawrence, Kansas).
There he received his early musical training, at a school run by Hungarian refugees who had come to the region during the Cold War and formed the Philharmonia Hungarica. “I’m kind of exclusively Hungarian trained,” he said. This influence was not only musical though. Many of his teachers had magyar vizslas, a Hungarian breed of dog. Pintscher fell in love with the breed as a teenager and has had a vizsla in his life ever since.
He learned both violin and piano and became attracted to conducting as a teenager, studying at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold with composer Giselher Klebe and conductor/composer Peter Eötvös, then adding composition to his list of skills.
Pintscher calls the orchestra “the instrument,” and early on was intrigued by the complexity of it. In an interview with the San Francisco Classical Voice, he said, “I felt mesmerized by the physicality of what the orchestra is — shaping sound by your mind.”
He also studied with Manfred Trojahn in Düsseldorf and spent a year in London studying and getting work experience. After graduation, he lived in a kibbutz in Israel.
Pintscher then made his home in Paris. “I wouldn’t say I identify as French, but it has always been a culture that I felt very, very affiliated with on many levels: the language, the arts, obviously the food, architecture, painting. It was always something that has very emotionally informed my creative side,” he said.
For the last 16 years, though he considered Paris home, his primary residence has been New York City. Pintscher has taught composition at The Juilliard School since 2014 and at New York University before that.
For the last 10 years, he has divided his time between teaching in the U.S. and running the Paris-based chamber ensemble Ensemble Intercontemporain (EIC), as music director. The ensemble was founded by composer/conductor Pierre Boulez in 1976. Pintscher’s tenure ended in 2023.
While the search for a new music director is a necessarily secretive process, Pintscher didn’t initially come to the orchestra as a candidate. He credits Nancy Chalifour, senior artistic administrator with KCS, with making the connection, and he signed on as a guest conductor for just a week.
By Saturday, said Beckley, they were driving around, looking at potential real estate. On Monday, KCS had offered him the position.
The negotiations were swift, and the organization announced Pintscher’s new role in May 2023, making international news.
Through this process, he has also received support and well-wishes from music director laureate Michael Stern. Stern even flew in to attend Pintscher’s first official appearance with the orchestra as music director-elect back in March. (Read the review of the performance at www.kcstudio.org.)
“I’ve really forged a very beautiful relationship with Michael. He has been, from the very first second, so supportive and enthusiastic about this,” said Pintscher. “It’s unprecedented that outgoing and incoming music directors are really so synced on so many levels. There is a complicity, there is trust, respect . . . which really enables me to fly and inject and implement my creativity into the institution because it will be a wonderful and cordial and smooth transition.”
An Intriguing Concert Schedule Coming Up
The 2024/2025 season will include many intriguing additions to the traditional concert programming, including three new concert formats designed to attract new concertgoers and refresh expectations for the concertgoing experience. Guest artists for the season include many of Pintscher’s personal friends and favorite collaborators.
Like Stern, Pintscher is a Gustav Mahler devotee, and the orchestra will continue to perform a Mahler symphony each season, performing Symphony No. 3 with contralto Jasmin White next June. “Mahler is the heartbeat of every major symphony orchestra in the world,” said Pintscher.
Particularly intriguing is a multi-year commissioning project, pairing a new composition with a Ludwig van Beethoven piano concerto. This season composer/pianist Conrad Tao will write and perform a new work with KCS, along with Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1 in C Major, in January 2025.
And a project Pintscher is particularly excited to share with Kansas City audiences is a production of Bela Bartok’s “The Miraculous Mandarin,” interpreted by a Dutch-based puppet company, which he toured last year with the Royal Concertgebouw.
Pintscher will actually begin his work with the orchestra before his official start date in September. That is because the Kansas City Symphony will go on the organization’s first ever European tour, due entirely to Pintscher’s connections.
“Orchestras love to tour, they love to go on a tour,” said Pintscher. “On the surface it feels like it’s prestigious to go on a tour, but it is much more than that. What it is, is that this very complex organism that is an orchestra is constantly daily, lifelong working on shaping and enhancing our sonic identity. This, of course, happens in a hall. We have one of the most phenomenal halls in the country, in the world, actually. And the orchestra is very much tuned in to developing their sonic identity within those conditions that we live in on a daily basis.
“But the challenge, and this is a positive challenge, is that an orchestra grows even further by training its ability to adjust to different acoustics, because what really makes a top world-class orchestra is the agility, the flexibility to instantly respond to the specific requirements of different halls.”
The Kansas City Symphony will perform in Berlin, Hamburg and Amsterdam.
“This is really something that will boost the momentum that we are hoping to generate here in Kansas City… We wade out to a different context, explore the unknown, to come back and inject exactly that enhancement of our flexibility at home in Kansas City.”
Pintscher and the orchestra will perform a European tour send-off concert Aug. 21, in Helzberg Hall.
Though Pintscher is also an acclaimed and award-winning composer, he didn’t initially program any of his own work.
“I’m not coming in here at all to promote my own work. It was extremely important for me to build that trust and connection with the orchestra before I would even consider thinking about bringing one of my own works. And that’s simply for the reason that I don’t want this to get in the way. This is not on my agenda,” said Pintscher.
He devotes time in the summer to compose, currently working on an opera co-commissioned by Berlin State Opera and the Paris Opera.
Pintscher comes to Kansas City with a wealth of experience, inspiration and global connections, as well as dreams for the future. With an initial five-year contract, there’s plenty of room to develop ideas and initiatives.
“The reason why I’m coming to Kansas City is because I found an orchestra here that is so hungry to explore. And that’s also why I would say this season is not a manifest of how it’s going to be. This is a start. It’s a soft page turn, looking forward, how my programming resonates with the instrument itself and with our community,” said Pintscher. “That will allow us to constantly reshape — this is exactly what we do as musicians. We tune our ideas, we tune what we do, and that’s a lifelong process. So for me, this is a very, very inspiring start.”
For more information about Matthias Pintscher and upcoming performances with the Kansas City Symphony, visit www.kcsymphony.org.
