About SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslautern

For more than fifty years, stylistic variety and the highest musical standards were the trademarks of the SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslautern. Beginning in the 1950s, the orchestra’s first principal conductor, Emmerich Smola, succeeded in bringing the greatest talents of his day to Kaiserslautern, stars as diverse as Zarah Leander, Anneliese Rothenberger, and Fritz Wunderlich. Later, prominent artists such as Monserrat Caballé, Cecilia Bartoli, Vesselina Kasarova, Diana Damrau, and Juan Diego Florez performed with the orchestra. In recent years, under the direction of guest conductors such as Alberto Zedda, David Stahl, Paul Goodwin, Frank Strobel and Alun Francis, the orchestra increasingly focused on opera, concerts, and film. The orchestra closely collaborated with young artists such as Martin Stadtfeld, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Johannes Moser, Thomas Hammes, and the piano duo Genova and Dimitrov. Performances in the great concert halls of Europe and at international festivals, as well as numerous acclaimed CD recordings confirmed the reputation of this orchestra, which in September 2007 merged with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony to form the German Radio Philharmonic Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern.