Manfred Honeck, with the Camerata Salzburg, at the Salzburg Festival in August 2019 (Salzburg Festival / Marco Borrelli)

Manfred Honeck is an Austrian conductor, born in 1958. He is the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He is from a family of nine children, a highly musical family. His brother Rainer is a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Manfred himself played in the orchestra too, before turning to conducting. These guys did not grow up in a Viennese manor. They were quite poor — although they did not exactly realize it, luckily — and their mother died early. Manfred was seven. Their father may not have had much materially, but he had a great love of music, and made sure that his children were filled with this art. The results were good.


I conducted a little interview of Manfred Honeck before an audience at the Salzburg Festival, and we have turned it into a Q&A podcast, here. At one point — this should be seen, as well as heard, but we will have to settle for hearing — Honeck gets up and dances, explaining how the dance relates to a Schubert symphony.

Honeck is a pure musician and a noble soul and a wonderful talker, and I bet you will enjoy getting to know him.