Hans Graf
Conductor
Armed with a spirit of musical curiosity and discovery, creative programming and his commanding presence on stage, Austrian conductor Hans Graf has raised orchestras to new heights while winning audiences young and old alike. Most recently, Graf has served as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s first Quantedge Music Director, achieving “a brave new world of music-making under inspired direction” since his appointment in the 2020-21 season.
Graf was formerly Music Director of the Houston Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Basque National Orchestra and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. Graf frequently appears with all major orchestras in North America including Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Montreal, and Toronto. In Europe, he has conducted the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, DSO Berlin, Dresden, Royal Concertgebouw, Rotterdam, the Oslo, Stockholm, the Hallé, London Philharmonic, London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, St Petersburg
Philharmonic and Russian National, the Bavarian, Danish and Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestras, Budapest Festival Orchestra and many others. A frequent conductor at the Salzburg Festival since 1983, Graf has led many performances at the Vienna State Opera and the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Paris and Rome, among others. Recent productions include Wagner’s Parsifal in
Zurich and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in Strasbourg. In 2014 he was awarded the Österreichischer Musiktheaterpreis for Richard Strauss’s Die Feuersnot at the famed Vienna Volksoper, where he returned in 2021 to lead Rosenkavalier.
Born in Austria, Graf studied conducting with Franco Ferrara, Sergiu Celibidache and Arvid Jansons. He is Professor Emeritus for Orchestral Conducting at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg. For his services to music, he was awarded the Chevalier de
l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold from the Republic of Austria.