Wolff, Hugh (21 October 1953

Conductor who was born in Paris, France, whilst his father was working as an officer in the United States Foreign Service. The family relocated to London, England, where Hugh attended primary school. When he was ten years of age, he began playing piano and writing music.

He studied composition with George Crumb and piano with Leon Fleischer in high school. Then he attended Harvard and continued his studies with Leon Kirchner in composition and Leonard Shure in piano. It was here he got his first taste of conducting the Bach Society Orchestra. He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music composition in 1975.

In 1975, he returned to his birthplace to study composition and conducting with Olivier Messiaen and Charles Bruck, respectively, on a fellowship/scholarship. When he came back to the U.S. a year later, he attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland, where he resumed his piano studies with his old high-school teacher, Leon Fleischer. He got a chance to watch the Baltimore Symphony rehearse, and conducted a community orchestra in nearby Annapolis.

In 1979, he started sending out resumes and it paid off when he received an invitation to audition for the National Symphony Orchestra, in Washington, D.C. They hired him as the Exxon/Arts Endowment conductor, and he was thrown into the fire quickly, subbing for Antol Dorati for two weeks when the maestro was unable to fulfill his guest conducting duties. Hugh was lauded for his quick turn at the podium, and remained with the NSO for six years, as assistant conductor to Mstislav Rostropovich, then as associate conductor. He was asked to be the guest conductor of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and the Hartford Symphony during the 1980-81 season.

In 1982, when Mstislav was scheduled to perform Henri Dutilleux’s cello concerto with the London Philharmonic, he asked the orchestra if Hugh might conduct. They accepted, and Hugh had one more bullet on his growing resume. It was not long after his London debut that the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, based in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, hired him to be their music director. To sweeten the pot, he was named the NSO’s associate conductor, a title he would assume for three years.

More orchestras wanted Hugh as a guest conductor: the Chicago Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, and the Stockholm Philharmonic. The NJSO hired him as their music director in 1985, the same year that the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts gave him their Conductors Award.

Hugh was with the NJSO from 1985 to 1993. Within that time frame, he also led the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as their principal conductor and appeared on a pair of TV specials, Live from Lincoln Center in December 1990 and A Capitol Fourth in 1992. In 1992, the SPCO named him their music director, a position he held until 2000. During his tenure, they recorded twenty CDs and toured Europe, Japan, and the States.

In 1993, Hugh was asked to be the artistic director for the American Russian Youth Orchestra and guest conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. His guest status changed in 1997 when they named him their principal conductor. Under Hugh’s baton, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra appeared at the Mozart Wurzburg, Rheingau and Salzburg festivals, and toured China, Europe, and Japan.

In 2001, he won the Cannes Classical Award for his recordings of George Antheil’s first and sixth symphonies and Samuel Barber’s and Edgar Meyer’s violin concertos, featuring Hilary Hahn. More recordings followed: George Antheil: Symphony No. 3, Meyer/Bottesini: Concertos, with Edgar Meyer, and Scorched, with the HR Big Band. In 2005, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra changed its moniker to the HR Symphony Orchestra. Their other recordings include Beethoven: Die Sinfonien and Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 88, 89 & 91.

In March 2008, Hugh directed the Munich Philharmonic at the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, Poland. He became the director of orchestras at the New England Conservatory of Music in autumn 2008. The NEC Symphony performed Max Bruch’s “Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor”, with Dami Kim as soloist, in Jordan Hall on 22^nd April 2009. On 24^th October 2009, Hugh conducted the NEC Philharmonia and the Wayne Shorter Quartet in a performance of “Prometheus Unbound”, under the umbrella of the NEC’s Jazz40 series.

Other artists and groups with whom he has worked include the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Joshua Bell, the Berlin Radio-Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, Jennifer Larmore, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the San Francisco Symphony, John Scofield, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Dawn Upshaw.

In February 2011, he conducted the NEC Philharmonia in a pair of concerts at Harvard and the NEC. Then he reunited with the National Symphony Orchestra, this time as resident conductor, for an eight-day tour of Kentucky. His itinerary included stops in Florence, Lexington, Louisville, Owensboro, Paducah, and Somerset, with performances of Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 4”, Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring Suite”, Michael Daugherty’s “Route 66”, and Maurice Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe: Suite No. 2”.

No rest for the weary: His spring 2011 schedule was booked with dates in Boston, Massachusetts, Helsinki, Finland, Luxembourg, Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland, and St. Polten and Vienna in Austria.

In 2017 he became Chief Conductor of the Belgian National Orchestra.

Thomas Hampson recordings
Adeste Fidelis (Frederick Oakeley/John Francis Wade)
Teldec 9031-73135 (CD: Christmas with Thomas Hampson – Traditional Christmas Selections)
Arranger – Thomas Pasatieri
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
Conductor – Hugo Wolff

Sources:

Wolff, Hugh (21 October 1953 – Present)

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