Joana Mallwitz

The Konzerthausorchester Berlin, conducted by Joana Mallwitz, opens the 2025–2026 season with Maurice Ravel's hypnotic Boléro. This will be followed by Bryce Dessner's Piano Concerto, inspired and performed by pianist Alice Sara Ott. Also on the programme: Anna Meredith's Nautilus, a work brimming with energy, and Ludwig van Beethoven's First Symphony.

As Christof Loy put it: Così fan tutte invites us to embrace the complexity of life and face the future with heads held high. In his staging of the version he abridged with Joana Mallwitz for the Salzburg Festival 2020 the focus is wholly on the figures and the subtle choreography of their emotional states — in a space that like a magnifying glass exposes the intricate mechanisms between the characters. In this way the production leads the protagonists and the audience to experience the ‘serene calm’ that can perhaps indeed cure our own ‘distempers’.

Composed in 1824, Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" will celebrate its bicentennial in 2024. With its famous finale based on Schiller's poem "An die Freude" (Ode to Joy), this colossal work is now one of the symbols of European unity. How was this symphony created? And how has it survived two centuries of history?

Wagner’s sixth opera, “Lohengrin,” tells the medieval legend of the Knight of the Swan: the knight Lohengrin is sent to protect Duchess Elsa of Brabant, who has been unjustly accused of murder. Johannes Erath directs the production, and Joana Mallwitz conducts the orchestra. Piotr Beczała plays the title role. Rachel Willis-Sørensen plays Elsa of Brabant.

A spectacular chase between the prince and the monster opens the scene, featuring a love story with a kidnapped princess, two warring antagonists—the Queen of the Night and Sarastro—, "funny characters" like Papageno and Papagena, and, last but not least, the magical instruments of flute and glockenspiel... The enchanting music and fairytale motifs make "The Magic Flute" the perfect introduction to the world of opera for young and old.

When Strauss and Hofmannsthal wrote «Der Rosenkavalier» – setting it in an imaginary Rococo Vienna and yet closely linked to the decadent fin de siècle – they created a profound social comedy. It is not without melancholy that the Marschallin lets her young lover Octavian go when he falls head over heels with Sophie, who hails from Faninal’s bourgeois household. As voluptuous as Strauss' score is, it contains tender moments of dream and melancholy. Director Lydia Steier stages Strauss’ opera according to an aesthetic concept by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein. Diana Damrau sings the Marschallin. Joana Mallwitz, chief conductor at the Konzerthaus Berlin, conducts the Orchester der Oper Zürich.

As a shooting star among the conductors, she was the youngest general music director in Europe, was elected "Conductor of the Year" and celebrated her acclaimed debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2020. The documentation accompanies Joana Mallwitz on her further career path until she took office in Berlin and at the same time gives a very personal insight into the life of the conductor.

Follows Joana Mallwitz during two pivotal years – when she gives birth to her son and her career accelerates significantly. But whether she’s at home, at rehearsals, or in the spotlight, the German conductor strives to prove that perfection at work is just as important as finding the right rhythm in life.

When a woman steps onto the conductor's podium, she is always one of the first: the first to lead a world-class orchestra, the first to conduct the closing night of London's Proms, the first to win the German Conductor Prize. It seems as though the world of orchestral conducting might finally be ready to change its attitudes toward female conductors.