Regular invitations bring the WDR Symphony Orchestra to Berlin, Dresden, Salzburg, Vienna, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Grafenegg Festival, and the Festival of San Sebastián. In recent years, the orchestra has also undertaken numerous tours across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Its growing number of award-winning CD productions has garnered significant national and international attention. Through a variety of music education projects, including “Concerts with the Mouse,” school concerts, and DVD productions for school classes and children, the WDR Symphony Orchestra makes an important contribution to cultural education.

The WDR Symphony Orchestra has made music history with significant world premieres and remains one of the leading commissioners of contemporary orchestral music. Renowned composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel, Wolfgang Rihm, Jörg Widmann, and Krzysztof Penderecki have presented their works with this orchestra.

In the 2017/2018 concert season, the WDR Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 70th anniversary. After its founding in 1947, it initially collaborated with prominent guest conductors until Christoph von Dohnányi was appointed its first principal conductor in 1964. The orchestra’s development into an internationally acclaimed ensemble is particularly linked to the tenure of Gary Bertini, who, in the 1980s, established the WDR Symphony Orchestra as a leading interpreter of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies.

The orchestra’s profile was further enhanced through its collaboration with Semyon Bychkov, principal conductor from 1997 to 2010. Under Bychkov’s direction, the WDR Symphony Orchestra embarked on numerous major tours. Their successful collaboration is documented in multiple live and studio recordings of works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Richard Strauss, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Giuseppe Verdi, and Richard Wagner.

From the beginning of the 2010/2011 season, Finnish maestro Jukka-Pekka Saraste served as principal conductor for nine years. Saraste brought greater focus to the music of his compatriot Jean Sibelius and developed Brahms and Beethoven cycles that received widespread acclaim. He also made significant contributions to the repertoire of European Romanticism and classical modernism. Under Saraste’s leadership, the WDR Symphony Orchestra produced several award-winning recordings featuring works by Mahler, Bruckner, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.

Since the 2019/2020 season, the Romanian conductor Cristian Măcelaru, one of the most promising conductors of the younger generation, has held the position of principal conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra. After several years as a violinist and concertmaster in various orchestras, he made his conducting debut in 2010 with Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in Houston and gained international attention in 2012 when he stepped in for Pierre Boulez at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he has been regularly invited to lead major American and European orchestras. In September 2020, he additionally assumed the role of principal conductor of the Orchestre National de France in Paris.