Wiebke Lehmkuhl
On the international concert stage Wiebke Lehmkuhl is a highly sought-after soloist and gives regular guest appearances with major orchestras, for instance the Tonhalle-Orchester in Zurich, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the Bamberg Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, as well as in Bilbao, Tokyo and Shanghai and with the Swedish Symphony Orchestra. She sang at the inauguration concert of the Elbphilharmonie with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock. She is also highly in demand at festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Lucerne Festival and the Festival La folle journée in Nantes. Wiebke Lehmkuhl is a regular guest at the Bayreuth Festival; last season she made her debut at the DNO in Amsterdam in a new production of Handel’s Jephtha.
The young contralto regularly works together with conductors such as Philippe Jordan, Daniele Gatti, Marc Minkowski, Hans-Christoph Rademann, Reinhard Goebel, Andreas Spering, Ottavio Dantone, Franz-Welser Möst, Riccardo Chailly, Kent Nagano and Daniel Harding. In addition Wiebke Lehmkuhl also had the opportunity to work with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen.
In this season Wiebke Lehmkuhl sings in the opening concerts of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich in the Maag Music Hall in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In spring 2018 she makes her debut in the same role with the Cleveland Orchestra in the Musikverein in Vienna under Franz Welser-Möst. She returns to the Elbphilharmonie to sing Mozart’s Requiem with the NDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock. She gives two major guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic: first under Yannick Nézet-Séguin and then not long afterwards under Ton Koopmann in Bach’s Mass B minor. This season sees a strong focus for Wiebke Lehmkuhl on works by Bach: she sings in the Christmas Oratorio in the Koncerthuset Copenhagen, in the Munich Philharmonie and in the Konzerthaus in Vienna. The St. Matthew Passion follows early in 2018 in Madrid conducted by David Afkham, then Bach cantatas with the Bach Academy in Leipzig. She gives a guest appearance with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Pablo Heras-Casado in Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Freiburg, Paris and Madrid. She brings the 2018 season to a close singing at the Bayreuth Festival in Wagner’s Parsifal and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
A number of CD releases are available documenting Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s artistic work, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Leipzig’s Gewandhausorchester under Riccardo Chailly (Decca), and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Magnificat with the RIAS Chamber Choir and Berlin’s Akademie für Alte Musik under Hans-Christoph Rademann (harmonia mundi).
Contralto Wiebke Lehmkuhl was born in Oldenburg and studied singing under Ulla Groenewold and Hanna Schwarz at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, graduating with distinction. Following guest engagements at Kiel Opera House and at the Hamburg and Hanover State Opera, Wiebke Lehmkuhl took up her first full-time engagement at Zurich Opera House while she was still studying. In 2012 she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. She has had further engagements in Der Ring des Nibelungen (stage director: Günter Krämer, conductor Philippe Jordan) at the Opéra de Bastille in Paris and at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich where she sang in the production of Götterdämmerung conducted by Kent Nagano.