Conductor
World
Hannah von Wiehler is a trailblazing conductor and scholar who leads orchestras across Europe, the USA, and China, and served for 8 years as Music Director of the UK’s Orchestra VOX.
She was also the assistant conductor for the season 2023-2024 at Opéra National de Bordeaux, where she collaborated with such conductors as Emmanuel Villaume and Kerri-Lynn Wilson, and she conducted the Orchestre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine also in a regional tour across four cities in France with a programme including Respighi’s I pini di Roma and Tchaikovskij’s Capriccio italiano.
Other highlights of her career include her collaboration with the London Chamber Orchestra, with whom she recorded two albums of the works of Ruth Gipps and Benjamin Britten (Three Worlds Records), with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and with Opera Holland Park in London.
Known for combing fierce creativity with entrepreneurship, von Wiehler launched Orchestra VOX in Oxford, UK in 2016 – a chamber orchestra dedicated to the intersection of classical music and social impact. From 2016 to 2024, she conducted over 100 concerts, operas, and multimedia performances which she wrote and designed. As Music Director of Orchestra VOX, her daring programming has included UK premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Steve Reich, and Harrison Birtwistle, an ambitious double-bill opera of Poulenc’s La voix humaine and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, and multimedia performances such as her original project Ophelia featuring the music of composers Hans Abrahamsen, Sergei Prokofiev, and fused elements of film and live theatre. Throughout her tenure, she also prioritised experimenting with friendly, non-traditional performance spaces (homeless shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, refugee detention centres) in addition to traditional concert halls. in order to encourage wider community access to classical music.
She previously conducted frequently in Ukraine and Russian, including orchestras like the International Symphony Orchestra Lviv, and the Kaluga Symphony Orchestra and Yakutsk State Symphony Orchestra. Since February 2022, von Wiehler has chosen to curtail her work in Russia.
In 2022, she was awarded the Carlos Miguel Prieto Conducting Fellowship, 1 of 9 fellows, out of an application pool of 500. She was recognised as the top conductor in the programme, and was subsequently invited for a residency in Mexico in 2023. Previously von Wiehler has assisted Barbara Hannigan with the London Symphony Orchestra, and Simone Young with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.
Von Wiehler holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and continues her scholarly leadership in the field of Soviet opera with an article forthcoming in Cambridge Opera Journal. She is also a polyglot: her love for languages has led her to learn 7 languages, and she is working on her eighth.
Recent highlights, apart from the concerts in France, include von Wiehler’s debut at Carnegie Hall with the Sejong Soloists, where she conducted the world premiere of Haemosu’s Celestial Chariot Ride by Augusta Read Thomas, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings; she also debuted with the Southbank Sinfonia in London and the Hohot Philharmonic Orchestra in China, in Estonia with an opera gala at the Estonian National Opera and she debuted in Italy with Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto.
Next projects include other exciting Italian debuts, with Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini in Parma and Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana in Palermo. In addition, she continues her existing relationships with many orchestras as the Orchestre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine, with whom she will appear in four concerts with two different programmes, including Ravel’s Ma mère l’oie.
