Conductor
Biography
A pianist's childhood in Mecklenburg — conservatory in Schwerin at six, a national prize at ten — turned into a conductor's career almost as fast: at twenty-three, Heiko Mathias Förster was principal conductor of the theatre in Brandenburg, where nine seasons brought him thirty-two staged premieres and tours to three continents. He led the Munich Symphony Orchestra from 1999 and the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen from 2007 to 2014, then took the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava (2014–2019), where he conducted Smetana's Má vlast and recorded Dvořák's opera Alfred; in 2017 he founded the Prague Royal Philharmonic, and later became Chief Conductor of the Baden-Baden Philharmonic. In August 2025 he sat on the jury of the Ferenc Fricsay Conducting Competition in Szeged. He studied conducting, piano and percussion at the Hanns Eisler college in Berlin, and his work includes orchestral arrangements of Wagner, among them a version of the Ring without voices.