About ESO
Conductor Laureate
Gernot Schmalfuss
Studied Oboe, piano and conducting at the conservatories in Detmold and London. From 1968 to 1979 he was playing the solo-oboe in the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. During this time Rudolf Kempe (the chief-conductor of the MPO) gave him lessons.Since 1970 he is a member of the, "Consortium Classicum", a renowned chamber music ensemble, which released many recordings (for instance the complete chamber music works for winds by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert and many others).
He was conductor of the orchestra of the "Richard-Strauss-Conservatory" in Munich and of the Munich Chamber Soloists and worked as a guest conductor besides others with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestras of Duisburg and Wuppertal, the orchestra of the "States Theatre of Kassel", the "German Bachsoloists", with the Radio of West-Germany and Berlin, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the South-West-German Chamber Orchestra, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra and the Gunma Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1986, he was appointed professor at the conservatory of music in Detmold. Besides recording for various radio stations, there are CD-recordings of a opera by Antonio Cartellieri (a friend of Beethoven), which he found in a library in Italy, romantic Clarinet-concertos, works of the romatic composer Norbert Burgmüller, who was most admired by Schumann(2. Symphony, an ouverture and the piano concerto). The second symphony and the third violin concerto by Max Bruch and the first symphony and concertos by J.Ph. Riotte.
From 2007 to 2023, he was invited to be music director & chief conductor of Evergreen Symphony Orchestra. Starting in 2024, he was transferred to chief artistic adviser & conductor laureate.