Artistic Director Eroica Berlin
Associate Artistic Director Teatro Nuovo
Jakob Lehmann is a conductor for whom stylistic awareness and historically informed performance are the pillars of emotionally sincere and energetic interpretations. His dual aims of fidelity to the composer’s intentions with their direct conveyance to his modern audiences guide his diverse musical activities. He regards as one of his main objectives the collaborative convergence of historically informed performance styles with more traditional approaches.
Jakob works both with orchestras such as Wiener Symphoniker, Tonkünstler Orchester, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Bochumer Symphoniker, and Brandenburger Symphoniker, as well as period instrument groups such as Concerto Köln, Orchestra of the 18th Century, {OH!} - Orkiestra Historyczna, La Banda Storica Bern, and the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra.
He is the Artistic Director of Eroica Berlin, a chamber orchestra he founded in 2015 and which performed at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie for the first time in 2020. The group consists of young musicians from Berlin and focuses on translating the impulses and inspirations from period performance to modern instruments.
The music of Gioachino Rossini and the Belcanto period is a field in which Jakob Lehmann is particularly active, both as a passionate opera conductor as well as in his research, and he has served as Associate Artistic Director of New York based Belcanto festival Teatro Nuovo since 2019. His conducting in this repertoire has been described by the press as “a revelation,” “extraordinary,” and “striking”. Recent opera productions include Rossini’s “Il barbiere di Siviglia” for North Carolina Opera (directed by Francesca Zambello), Donizetti’s “Poliuto” and Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” for Teatro Nuovo, and Mozart’s “Idomeneo” for Opéra National de Lorraine.
As a presenter, lecturer, and coach for the topics of Romantic performance practice and the Belcanto style, he is working with institutions such as the Juilliard School New York, the Dutch National Opera Studio, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Hochschule der Künste Bern, the Conservatorio Guido Cantelli in Novara, as well as his Alma Mater, the University of Arts Berlin. In 2023, he was elected as the President of the German Rossini Society and further is a member of the American Rossini Society.
Jakob's discography encompasses a wide range of repertoire on various labels. His two most recent albums, “Mozart 1791” with Concerto Köln (Warner Classics) and Rossini’s “L’italiana in Algeri” with Eroica Berlin (Pan Classics), have been met with great critical acclaim.
In the 2024/2025 season, he makes his debuts with Brucknerorchester Linz, Les Siècles, Sinfonieorchester Liechtenstein, Orchestra La Scintilla, Collegium Novum Zürich, Wiener Concert-Verein, The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Juilliard Orchestra and Juilliard415. He returns for three different projects to Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchester (amongst them three concerts at Vienna’s Musikverein), and further works again with Anima Eterna Brugge, Concerto Köln, the Orchestra of the 18th Century, La Banda Storica Bern, and Eroica Berlin. He conducts Verdi’s “Ernani” in his second collaboration with North Carolina Opera and Verdi’s “Macbeth” in his seventh season with Teatro Nuovo.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Liszt Les Préludes & Totentanz, Fauré Requiem, Anima Eterna Brugge
Concertgebouw Brugge (January 2025)
The portamenti and the variously sketched sensations became clear... some of which had a chamber-intensive, avant-garde touch. The Leipzig Blüthner from 1859 was also perfectly balanced... with the colourful, effect-rich and full-bodied, spider-web-like, earthy orchestra, skilfully coordinated by Lehmann... Without a baton and evident in the gestures, but above all audible in the lively phrasing and dynamics, Lehmann was even better in the vocal music. With a textured Anima Eterna, sonorous strings… a powerful harmonium, subtle timpani, harp and brass with French trombones, he created an agile, heartfelt, structured and homogeneous interpretation.
Jens Klier, Bachtrack
New Year’s Concerts (Strauß), Tonkünstler Orchestra
(January 2025)
The young conductor showed with care and great panache the larger phrases and musical details of the pieces, and the orchestra followed its leader securely and precisely through the many changes in tempo and dynamics.
Niederösterreichische Nachrichten
Schubert, Bloquert and Beethoven, Les Siècles
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (October 2024)
Parisians were allowed to discover a young conductor with a great future…in this programme, we found all his qualities: precision, rigour and flexibility. In Schubert, we are immediately seduced by the conductor's supple hand and his sense of contrast, which alternately makes the orchestra sing and the tragedy rumble without any feeling of discontinuity…The orchestra responds without fail to his precise conducting with expressive but always measured gestures. His Beethoven is uniformly taut, fast, muscular…He highlights the richness of the timbre of the woodwinds and brass, whose sometimes slightly ironic remarks pierce a perfectly homogeneous string ensemble. The most fascinating moment of this performance is surely the third movement, where the conductor subtly lets the instruments whisper before launching into the final allegro with controlled fury, ending the concert on an enthusiastic note that earned him a great deal of applause, also from the visibly ecstatic orchestra.
Musicologie.org
Mozart and Bruckner, Les Siècles
Brucknerfest Linz (October 2024)
Mozart's last symphony is laid out weightlessly and airily; the third movement is particularly dance-like, in keeping with its root as a minuet. The concluding “molto allegro” is indeed played very quickly, but always remains precise. Despite all the changes in style, especially in the first movement, everything remains compact, is of one piece. All in all, an outstanding interpretation of this well-known classic, with a velvety and lively tone…The orchestra presents the huge sound surfaces of the Bruckner symphony with just as much precision and transparency as the Mozart. Here, too, the conductor chooses relatively high tempi (total duration a good 50 minutes!), although the overall impression always remains plausible and emotionally stirring…A very special brilliance from the many horns is always wonderfully accentuated: Jakob Lehmann has the sound balance just as precisely under control as he doses the enormous overall dynamics of the large orchestra and carefully builds climaxes and arcs of tension. The weightiness and (possibly only hollow??) dignity of slower performances can thus be questioned in a well-founded manner…This concert was a first-class pleasure, which was rewarded by the audience with loud enthusiasm and standing ovations.
Online Merker
Lehmann, who is a passionate advocate of faithfulness to the original sources and historically informed performance, had travelled to Linz with the Les Siècles orchestra, founded by Roth in 2003, to conclude the cycle with Bruckner's last, unfinished symphony, to ‘shed new light on the Ninth from the perspective of historical performance practice’. Before Lehmann interpreted the Bruckner symphony, he conducted Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. His firm grip on the score left enough room for the divine weightlessness and soulfulness that we love so much about the Salzburg master. There was much that was new to hear in Lehmann's interpretation of Bruckner. The sharply contoured sound image was remarkably colourful, and even the occasional clusters of sound were astonishingly transparent. These sometimes unusual sounds were embedded in a breathtaking dramaturgy of intensification that did not shy away from eruptive outbursts. The raw, pounding motorisation of the Scherzo was fascinating due to the contrast with the Trio, which came across as spooky, light and airy - only the French can play it so weightlessly. When the last movement, the powerful and yet so intimate Adagio, came to a peaceful close, there was an emotional silence before the audience showed their appreciation with increasingly enthusiastic applause and standing ovations.
Kieler Nachrichten
Bellini I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Teatro Nuovo
Rose Theater, New York City (July 2024)
Lehmann would lead the performance with equal measures of charm and authority. From the first notes, the audience was transported into a sonic world far removed from that generally experienced in most opera houses.
New York Classical Review
Jakob Lehmann led a swiftly paced reading with the music always having a forward propulsion…it was a thrilling reading that gave the opera suspense and unpredictability, and was always willing to take risks.
Operawire
CD: Rossini L'italiana in Algeri, Eroica Berlin
Pan Classics (2024)
You have to have this ‘Italiana’ on your CD shelf!...The recording is meticulous, curious, full of relish. Ruthlessly fast-paced at times, beguiling in the instrumental parts, but not disturbing for the singers."
Fono Forum*****
This energetic Italiana in Algeri vigorously shakes up our listening habits.
Classica
While Rossini's work had already been the subject of a number of experiments on period instruments, none had ever gone so far in terms of musicological research, and the result is singularly seductive. At the heart of this astonishing approach is conductor Jakob Lehmann, whose "historically informed" approach has led to a radically new interpretation of Rossini's music, full of freedom, in which the orchestra itself no longer accompanies but really carries the action, with inventive phrasing, a sense of rhythm, accents and lines, and impressive virtuosity in relentless, rigorously precise accelerandi…The new Rossini has arrived, and it's an excellent vintage.
Avant-Scène Opéra
Conductor Lehmann leads with a swift, yet inspired hand whose brisk tempi powerfully drive the action forward. His relentless enthusiasm make the recording uncompromising in its directness.
OperaWire
Jakob Lehmann's vision of a streamlined, historically informed but never dogmatically rigid Rossini buffa is striking.
RBB RadioDrei
There is enormous musical spontaneity achieved by conductor Jakob Lehmann.
Pizzicato.lu
Mozart Idomeneo, Opéra National de Lorraine
(September 2023)
Conductor Jakob Lehmann opts for authenticity. His highly articulate conducting, with its lively, alert string sound, nurtures the drama and supports the stage perfectly.
ResMusica.com
The orchestra’s almost musky timbre made it a versatile collaborator. In the concertato at the end of Act II of “Poliuto,” it complemented rather than competed with the singers, with transparent textures that allowed the mildly lustrous voices to come through...Jakob Lehmann relished accelerating the tempo of concluding allegros and guided the music with such subtlety that even staccatos had shape to them.
New York Times
Rossini Stabat Mater, Teatro Nuovo
New York City (June 2019)
Rossini performances have a mixed history in New York City, but Thursday June 27th there was no better place to be than on the Upper East Side, at the Church of the Heavenly Rest...The biggest revelation was the conducting of Jakob Lehmann. Too many performances of Rossini disappoint because of indifferent conducting (even among established conductors) and his attention to detail and engagement surely inspired the performers, and certainly inspired the audience.
American Rossini Society
One of the most moving Rossini performances that New York has experienced in recent times.
American Rossini Society
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