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Soprano Juliane Banse has a varied repertory of opera and concert music and is especially famed for her performances in Mahler's symphonies. She is also a noted educator.

Banse was born in Tettnang, West Germany, on July 10, 1969. She moved with her family to Zurich, Switzerland, as a toddler. Musically talented, she took up the violin at age five and also took ballet lessons, making her stage debut as a dancer at the Zurich Opera House. One critic noted later that even as a singer, she retained the manner of a ballet dancer. Banse switched to voice at 15, taking lessons with Paul Steiner and then with Ruth Rohner at the Zurich Opera House. She moved on to the Musikhochschule in Munich, studing with Brigitte Fassbaender and Daphne Evangelatos. Banse took first prize at the Kulturforum competition in Munich in 1989, and she has continued to win major prizes throughout her career.

The Munich prize led to a series of engagements in Mozart roles for Banse at the Komische Oper Berlin. Banse made her recording debut in 1993 on the Jecklin label on a volume in a series of the complete songs of Othmar Schoeck. The Mozart appearances in Berlin brought opera parts around Europe and a regular cast member slot at the Wiener Staatsoper beginning in 1994. That year, she made her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in a concert presentation of Berg's Lulu Suite. Banse made her U.S. debut the following year, with the St. Louis Symphony in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor. She has gone on to give Mahler symphony performances under such conductors as Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, and Lorin Maazel, among others. Banse has appeared at many major opera houses and has a flourishing career as a lieder singer, having been accompanied by such major pianists as András Schiff, Maurizio Pollini, and Helmut Deutsch. The latter was accompanist on her contributions to a complete cycle of Brahms songs on the CPO label. As of 2022, Banse had appeared on more than 100 recordings, including, early that year, a reading of Hans Werner Henze's Nachtstücke und Arien on the Naxos label. Her recorded output is notable for its breadth, including music from Bach to the contemporary era. Banse has been on the faculty of the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf since early 2017. ~ James Manheim

Slovak tenor Pavol Breslik gained wide attention in the first part of his career for his mastery of a variety of Mozart roles. As he has approached middle age, he has broadened his repertory to include dramatic parts as well as 20th century and contemporary opera. Breslik was born Pavol Bršlík in the town of Kysucké Nové Mesto, Slovakia, near the Polish border, on March 9, 1979. (He has used the typographically less problematic German form of his surname, Breslik.) He studied at the University of the Arts in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, and showed promise, traveling to Marseille, France, for further studies at the Cnipal opera studio during the 2002-2003 school year. His teachers have included William Matteuzzi, Mady Mesplé, Yvonne Minton, and Peter Dvorsky. Breslik made his debut in 2002 as Nemorino in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore at Germany's Klosterneuberg Opera. The following year, he joined the cast of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden and appeared in a series of Mozart roles -- including Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, and Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni -- as well as in operas by Wagner, Mussorgsky, and others. These efforts led to recognition as the most promising singer of the year by the German magazine Opernwelt in 2005. Breslik began singing on operatic stages across Europe in the late 2000s, and in 2008 he appeared at the grand reopening of Munich's Cuvilliés Theater. He joined the cast of the Zurich Opera in 2012, and as his voice has deepened he has taken on roles from the later 19th century, including Alfredo in Verdi's La traviata, Faust in Gounod's opera, Steva Buryja in Janacek's Jenufa, and Peter Quint in Britten's The Turn of the Screw. Breslik has also been associated with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, performing Cassio in Verdi's Otello, Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff, as well as several of his earlier specialties. A high-profile Breslik appearance came in 2017 when he performed at the opening of Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie concert hall on January 11, in the world premiere of a new work by Wolfgang Rihm. He gave his debut recital at the Konzerthaus in Vienna in December 2018. Breslik has sung lieder and choral music parts as well as opera, and he has been heard on recordings including a 2017 recital of Dvorak songs on the Supraphon label. ~ James Manheim

The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra is one of four major orchestral ensembles based in Vienna, the others being the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, and Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, or ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, is unique because it is the only radio symphony orchestra in Austria and is thus the official Austrian broadcast orchestra. Its repertory has been broad, taking in pre-Classical, Classical, Romantic, and 20th century music, with a substantial portion devoted to contemporary works.

The Vienna RSO was formed in 1969, from the ORF Symphony Orchestra, a postwar ensemble largely devoted to contemporary music. The new ensemble retained the name of the parent orchestra, and its management appointed the first chief conductor, Milan Horvat (1969-1975), who largely retained the policy of promoting the music of contemporary Austrian composers and works by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. With the ascension of Leif Segerstam as chief conductor in 1975, the Vienna RSO, while retaining a strong allegiance to 20th century music, began to focus attention on Classical and Romantic works as well. This tendency was expanded further when Lothar Zagrosek (1982-1986) succeeded Segerstam. Zagrosek often played rarely encountered Classical works. Pinchas Steinberg served as chief conductor from 1989-1996. It was in the latter year that the ensemble adopted the name Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. More importantly, the management also appointed Dennis Russell Davies as the new chief conductor. Davies made numerous recordings with the orchestra, almost all focusing on modern or contemporary works by the likes of Berio, Glass, Kancheli, Silvestrov, and Tüür. Bertrand de Billy succeeded Davies in 2002. He was even more active in the recording studio, with well over 20 recordings to his credit, recordings that covered broader repertory, including many standards by Haydn, Beethoven, Dvorák, Debussy, and more. Toward the end of his tenure, de Billy had disputes with orchestra management that led to his decision to step down. In 2009, the orchestra was renamed to its current name, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. That same year, management announced that Cornelius Meister would succeed de Billy in 2010; Meister remained in this post until 2018. In 2019, Marin Alsop assumed the orchestra's chief conductor position, becoming the first woman to hold the post.

The Vienna RSO performs at one of four Viennese locales: the Musikverein, Wiener Konzerthaus, ORF RadioKulturhaus, and the Theater an der Wien. The ensemble receives government funding and is regarded as a cultural goodwill ambassador for Austria. The orchestra gives regular tours abroad; previous trips have taken them throughout Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. It has recorded for such labels as CPO, Sony Classical, Orfeo, and Oehms Classics, among many others. In 2020, the Vienna RSO was heard on the Capriccio album Ernst von Dohnányi: The Veil of Pierrette, under Ariane Matiakh, and the Naxos album, Morton Gould: Symphonettes Nos. 2-4; Spirituals for Orchestra, under Arthur Fagen. ~ Robert Cummings

Conductor Manfred Honeck's conducting career rapidly grew through the 1990s after he learned conducting from the inside as an orchestral musician. He has been the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony since 2008 and has instituted a vigorous recording program with that group.

Born September 17, 1958, in Nenzing, Austria, Honeck received his musical training at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. After graduation, he took a position as a violist with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, making him eligible for membership in the Vienna Philharmonic; that group accepted him. He began working as a conductor with the Vienna Youth Orchestra. In 1987, conductor Claudio Abbado invited Honeck to assist him in conducting the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Vienna. His breakthrough performance was at the Gustav Mahler Festival in Kassel in 1989, conducting the centenary performance of the world premiere of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major ("Titan").

Honeck made his operatic debut with the Vienna Volksoper in 1989, leading Johann Strauss Jr.'s Die Fledermaus. Later in the season, he was invited to lead the company in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia. In 1990, he was invited to conduct the gala concert of the Vienna Philharmonic commemorating the 75th anniversary of the dedication of the Wiener Konzerthaus. Other conducting opportunities quickly opened up: he led the Berlin State Orchestra, the Berlin State Opera at the Unter den Linden Theater, and the Hamburg State Opera. At the latter position, he was again standing in Mahler's footprints when he led the official Mahler production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. In 1991, Honeck received a five-year contract with the Zürich Opera House as First Kapellmeister. There, he added Massenet's Hérodiade and Giordano's operas Fedora and Andrea Chénier to his credits and conducted the first performance of Herbert Willi's Schlafes Bruder. A high point of this early part of his career was his debut at Salzburg, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic during the Mozart Week of 1994.

In 1996, Honeck became the chief conductor of the MDR (Central German Radio) Symphony Orchestra of Leipzig. In 1997, he was appointed music director of the Norwegian National Opera, and in 1998, he was named the principal guest conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he led a variety of ensembles in recordings, including the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; with the latter, he issued a recording of Allan Pettersson's Symphony No. 12 on the CPO label in 2006. He was the chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (2000-2006) and music director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart (2007-2011).

In 2008, Honeck began a tenure with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra that has been extended through the mid-2020s. With the Pittsburgh Symphony, Honeck has recorded for Exton Classics and for the orchestra's in-house Reference Recordings label. He has continued to specialize in late Romantic repertory, recording several Mahler symphonies, Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 for Reference in 2015, and suites from Richard Strauss' Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier for the same label the following year. In 2017, Reference Recordings released the Honeck/Pittsburgh recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, powerfully coupled with Barber's Adagio for Strings. Honeck's 2019 album Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 with the Pittsburgh Symphony was nominated for a Grammy Award. Honeck and the orchestra remained busy through the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing recordings of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 in 2021 and Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 ("Pastoral"), in 2022 on Reference Recordings, among other works. ~ James Manheim