Conductors & team

In collaboration with honorary conductor Philippe Herreweghe, emeritus conductor Jaap van Zweden, and renowned guest conductors it performs several concerts each year in prestigious Belgian and international concert venues. From season 2026-2027, Marc Albrecht will assume the role of chief conductor of the orchestra; in 2025-2026, he will already make several appearances as chief conductor designate.

Marc Albrecht — Chief conductor designate

Biography

Starting in September 2026, Marc Albrecht will assume the role of chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. Before this official appointment, audiences in Antwerp will have the opportunity to see him performing with the orchestra, in the spring of 2026.

Marc Albrecht, hailing from Hanover, is a highly regarded conductor, particularly known for his expertise in German and Austrian late-romantic repertoire and contemporary music. His ability to bring together the intimacy of a chamber music approach with the expansive symphonic sound has made him a sought-after presence worldwide. Recent performances have taken him to leading opera houses in Berlin, Tokyo and Geneva, as well as to prestigious orchestras such as the Oslo Philharmonic, Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de Sao Paulo in Brazil and Konzerthausorchester Berlin. Marc Albrecht also regularly appears at festivals, such as Salzburger Festspiele, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Bayreuther Festspiele and BBC Proms in London.

Throughout his career, Marc Albrecht has garnered numerous accolades. He was honoured as Conductor of the Year by the International Opera Awards and later earned the same distinction from OPUS KLASSIK. In recognition of his contributions to Dutch musical life during his ten-year tenure as Music Director of the Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2020. His award-winning recordings include Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau and Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane.

His career was strongly influenced by Claudio Abbado, whom he assisted at the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. After studies in Vienna and engagements at Staatsoper Hamburg and Semperoper Dresden, he became Generalmusikdirektor in Darmstadt. This was followed by notable positions as Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, and a ten-year tenure with the Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in Amsterdam.

Images

Download hi-res images of Marc Albrecht here

Philippe Herreweghe — Honorary conductor

Biography

Philippe Herreweghe was born in Ghent and studied at both the university and music conservatory there, studying piano with Marcel Gazelle. During this period he started conducting and founded Collegium Vocale Gent in 1970. He was invited by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt, who had noticed his innovative work, to participate in their recordings of the complete cantatas of J.S. Bach.

Herreweghe’s energetic, authentic and rhetorical approach to baroque music was soon drawing praise. In 1977 he founded the ensemble La Chapelle Royale in Paris, with whom he performed music of the French Golden Age. From 1982 to 2002 he was artistic director of the Académies Musicales de Saintes. During this period, he founded several ensembles with whom he made historically appropriate and well-thought-out interpretations of repertoire stretching from the Renaissance to contemporary music. They include the Ensemble Vocal Européen, specialised in Renaissance polyphony, and the Orchestre des Champs Élysées, founded in 1991 with the aim of playing pre-Romantic and Romantic repertoire on original instruments. Since 2009, Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent have been actively working on the development of a large European-level symphonic choir. Since 2001 Philippe Herreweghe is artistic director of the Accademia delle Crete Senesi, from 2017 onwards known as the Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi festival in Tuscany, Italy.

Philippe Herreweghe continually seeks out new musical challenges, and has been very active performing the great symphonic repertoire, from Beethoven to Stravinsky. Since 1997 he is attached to the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra both as principal and guest conductor. He is also in great demand as a guest conductor with orchestras such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra or the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich. In the upcoming seasons projects with the Staatkapelle Dresden, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and the Cleveland Orchestra are planned.

Over the years, Philippe Herreweghe has built up an extensive discography of more than 100 recordings with all these different ensembles, on such labels as Harmonia Mundi France, Virgin Classics and Pentatone. Highlights include the Lagrime di San Pietro of Lassus, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Schumann, Mahler’s song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5, Pierrot Lunaire by Schönberg and the Symphony of Psalms by Stravinsky. In 2010 he founded together with Outhere Music his own label φ (PHI. Since then more than 25 new recordings with music from William Byrd till Igor Stravinsky have become available. Recent recordings include Carlo Gesualdo’s Sixth Book of Madrigals (LPH024), Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No.4 (LPH025) and Du treuer Gott (LPH027) with Leipzig cantatas by J.S.Bach.

Philippe Herreweghe has received numerous European awards for his consistent artistic imagination and commitment. In 1990 the European music press named him “Musical Personality of the Year”. Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent were appointed “Cultural Ambassadors of Flanders” in 1993. A year later he was awarded the Belgian order of Officier des Arts et Lettres, and in 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven. In 2003 he received the French title Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. Lastly, in 2010 the city of Leipzig awarded him its Bach-Medaille for his great service as a performer of Bach. In 2017 Philippe Herreweghe receives an honorary doctorate at Ghent University.

Images

Download hi-res portraits of Phillippe Herreweghe here

Download concert footage with Phillippe Herreweghe here

Jaap van Zweden — Conductor emeritus

Biography

Jaap van Zweden is currently Music Director of the Seoul Philharmonic and Music Director-Designate of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. From the 2018-19 season through the 2023-24 season he served as the 26th Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, and he was the Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic for 12 seasons running from 2012 to 2024.

Antwerp enjoyed his talent as chief of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra between 2008 and 2011. Since the season 2022-2023, he has rejoined Antwerp Symphony as conductor emeritus.

He has conducted orchestras on three continents, appearing as guest with, in Europe, the Orchestre de Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Tonhalle-Orchestra Zurich and London Symphony Orchestra, and, in the United States, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and other distinguished ensembles.

Maestro van Zweden’s tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic was distinguished by such highlights as the reopening of the transformed David Geffen Hall, as well as World, US, and New York Premieres of 31 new works. Among them are pieces commissioned through Project 19 — which marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution with new works by 19 female composers, among them Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Stride. Throughout van Zweden’s time in New York, he conducted repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Bruckner to premieres by Marcos Balter, Etienne Charles, Caroline Shaw, and Carlos Simon, in addition to the works by Wolfe and Adams.

Jaap van Zweden’s New York Philharmonic recordings include the world premiere of David Lang’s Prisoner of the State (2020) and Wolfe’s Grammy-nominated Fire in my mouth (2019), both released on the Decca Gold label. He conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic in first-ever performances in Hong Kong of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, released on the Naxos label. His acclaimed performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal — the last of which earned him the prestigious Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012 — are available on CD and DVD.

Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden, at age 19, was appointed the youngest-ever concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and began his conducting career almost 20 years later, in 1996. In April 2023, van Zweden received the Concertgebouw Prize for exceptional contributions to that organisation’s artistic profile. He remains Conductor Emeritus of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and Honorary Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, where he was Chief Conductor (2005–13); he also served as Chief Conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (2008–11). Under his leadership, the Hong Kong Philharmonic was named Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year in 2019. He was named Musical America’s 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile on the occasion of his arrival at the New York Philharmonic.

In 1997, Jaap van Zweden and his wife, Aaltje, established the Papageno Foundation to support families of children with autism. The Foundation has grown into a multifaceted organisation that focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism. The Foundation provides in-home music therapy through a national network of qualified music therapists in the Netherlands; opened the Papageno House in 2015 (with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance) for young adults with autism to live, work, and participate in the community; created a research center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing the effects of music therapy on autism; develops funding opportunities to support autism programs; and, more recently, launched the app TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.