Continuity and change
Portrait of the conductor Joana Mallwitz

Her goal is to bring the audience with her from the first note to the last when she stands on the podium, says Joana Mallwitz. This attitude has already helped her to carve out a strong career. Now thirty-eight, she is making her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

The composer Kurt Weill begins his First Symphony with a series of chords. Every chord is entirely different. Each demands a unique colouring, sometimes painful and beautiful, sometimes aggressive and provocative. Joana Mallwitz recorded the work with the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra, treating this complex opening with unusual vividness and the greatest care.

This debut disc could be seen as a test case for Joana Mallwitz’s understanding of herself as a conductor: on the one hand, there is a remarkable logical rigour and attention to detail, while on the other, her music-making is notable for its sensuality and the intensity of its colours. Whenever she stands in front of an orchestra, she communicates a sense of immediacy. There is little performative extroversion, but she displays a profound ability to immerse herself in the moment.

An artistic communicator

Joana Mallwitz has been chief conductor of the Konzerthaus Orchestra since summer 2023. She regards the high number of orchestras in the capital as both a challenge and a tremendous source of inspiration, she says; such a glut of institutions can result in an even greater public appetite for art and music and culture. Her role, she says, is that of an artistic communicator, seeking to win over an audience and encourage it to remain loyal. But she knows how quickly laurels can wither in her chosen profession: “You have to keep on proving yourself,” she says.

Mallwitz was born in Hildesheim in Lower Saxony and joined a class for highly gifted students at the University of Music in Hanover when she was thirteen year old. Six years later she took up her first professional appointment as a répétiteur at the Heidelberg Theatre, where her duties included conducting. After a stint in Erfurt, she moved to Nuremberg, where she spent five years as the company’s general music director. The Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra, where she took up her post in 2021, is the first purely symphonic orchestra she has led.

Each time a prestigious conducting post has fallen vacant in recent years, her name has been heard, even if only as a rumoured candidate. The number of invitations that she receives has long since outstripped her availability.

Preparation and authenticity

But Mallwitz has no interest in forcing a metoric rise. Her reputation rests on the friendly and matter-of-fact manner that wins over audiences and ensures a firm place in today’s richly-varied world of music. “True authority comes from preparation and authenticity, and not an authoritarian approach,” she explains. Never pushy, she wins praise for her charisma and inner conviction. At the same time, she knows what she wants, and how to achieve her goals.

On the subject of meeting a new orchestra, she explained in an interview with the German TAZ newspaper: “Conducting is one of the quickest and most complex ways of communicating. Impulses fly back and forth between lots of different people with the speed of lightning. This means that every time you comes into contact with a new orchestra, there is a certain way in which we get to know one another very quickly and at very close quarters.”

Debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker

Mallwitz decides to work with an orchestra, she says, “if the stars are really aligned and the result seem likely to be artistically productive." Rather than grasping for high-profile opportunities, she measures success by whether an initial invitation is followed by a second and a third one. Her first meeting with the Berliner Philharmoniker marks another potential beginning.

Mallwitz admits that she prefers to spend longer periods of time in particular places and be tied to a city orchestra or opera house, because forming a connection with her audience is important to her. But that also demands seeking new impulses beyond her own comfort zone, and “sometimes simply trying out new ideas, trusting myself, engaging in conversation and experimenting with new things.” Continuity and change are her yin and yang.