Christian Ehwald

Christian Ehwald studied conducting at the Hanns Eisler academy in Berlin and afterwards at the conservatory in St Petersburg with Arvid and Mariss Jansons; in 1979 he took third prize at the Herbert von Karajan competition. Born in Germany in 1953, he was chief conductor of the Jena Philharmonic from 1981 to 1988 and general music director of the Magdeburg opera house and its Philharmonic from 1998; accounts differ over whether his tenure ended in 2002 or 2003. His recordings of Hans Werner Henze's violin concertos were selected for the German Record Critics' quarterly list in 2005. He directed the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra in China and later became its honorary music director. He led orchestral conducting studies at the Hanns Eisler academy from 2002 to 2023, and Lahav Shani, Kristiina Poska and Kah Chun Wong all came through his class. He has appeared as a guest with the major German symphony orchestras.