A unique figure in the cultural history of Charleston, David Stahl has been Music Director and Conductor of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra since 1984. During this time, he has established himself as one of the most influential and charismatic artistic personalities in the South and is equally at home on both symphony and opera podiums around the world. He is among a select few who hold a Music Directorship of both a symphony orchestra and an opera house on both sides of the Atlantic.
Since coming to Charleston, Mr. Stahl has literally transformed the CSO into a leading cultural institution in the region and has received a national award for imaginative programming from the American Symphony Orchestra League. Hundreds of thousands of listeners regularly hear the unique and vibrant sound of the CSO either live, in radio broadcasts, recordings or in telecasts over the years as they have performed all over North and South Carolina, on college campuses, in schools and parks. In addition, new generations of music lovers first came to hear live symphonic music through the hundreds of Young Peoples' Concerts, Small Fry concerts, outreach programs and in-school performances that Maestro Stahl had initiated. David Stahl and the CSO have toured all over the U.S., Canada and Israel with Porgy and Bess. Two of the unforgettable moments in CSO history were performing for Prince Charles at the Dock St. Theater and the special Custom House concert performed two weeks after Hurricane Hugo which was telecast live statewide and lifted the community's spirits. As a mentor and pedagogue, David Stahl has nurtured and encouraged countless young musicians, and dozens of former CSO musicians can be found in America’s great orchestras.
Many of the legendary artists of our time have performed with David Stahl and the CSO including Itzhak Perlman, Pinchus Zukerman, Sherrill Milnes, John Browning, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, Nadja Salerno Sonenberg, Yefim Bronfman, Jean Yves Thibaudet, Lorin Hollander, Jerry Hadley, Carter Brey, Judy Collins, Chet Atkins and Paula Robison. His many recordings with the CSO include collaborations with both Paula Robison and Enrique Graf. For his long-standing commitment to the Charleston community and the State of South Carolina he has received numerous awards and honors including the Elizabeth Verner Award, the Order of the Palmetto and an Honorary Doctorate from the College of Charleston.
Mr. Stahl is also the Music Director and Chief Conductor of Munich's beloved Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz where in eleven seasons he has been credited with leading an "amazing metamorphosis of astounding proportions" (Opera News), raising the ranking of the Orchestra to major status and being named Munich's "Man of the Year." He has a repertoire in Munich of more than 30 operas including many seldom heard masterpieces of Mozart, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Rossini, Puccini and Wagner. His performances of Wagner’s early opera Das Liebesverbot was hailed as one of the finest new productions of a Wagner opera in the past decade in Munich. He led the first ever Munich performances of Beethoven's Leonore and conducts regularly at the Bavarian State Opera. His Berlin appearances both at the Berlin Philharmonic with the Deutsche Symphonie and at the Deutsche Opera Berlin in a revival of Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny were major triumphs. Most recently, he has guest conducted the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, toured with both the Radio Orchestra of Kaiserslautern and Staatskappelle Halle, and led last year’s Spoleto Festival USA Finale at Middleton Place to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of his 1981 Charleston debut.
He has conducted more than 100 orchestras and opera companies over the past quarter century on four continents. His German debut in Mannheim leading performances of Fidelio and Tristan und Isolde led to his invitation to first appear in Munich as Principal Guest Conductor of the Gärtnerplatz in 1996. His demanding artistic standards and popularity has led to countless performances and recordings with many of the world's great orchestras including the Staatskappelle Dresden, Munich Philharmonic, NDR Orchestra of Hamburg, SDR Orchestra of Stuttgart, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic among many others. In North America, he has conducted The Great Gatsby at Lyric Opera of Chicago and has conducted the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center and at the opera companies of Minnesota, Detroit, Montreal and Honolulu. He has also led many other symphony orchestras including those of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Atlanta and Buffalo. In the 1980s, he conducted regularly in Italy where he appeared in Rome, Palermo, Genoa and Milan and, at the invitation of Gian Carlo Menotti, opened the 1989 Spoleto Festival of the Two Worlds with Tales of Hoffmann.
The son of German Jewish refugees, David Stahl was born in New York City, and made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 23 with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of New York. He then was invited by Seiji Ozawa to become one of the select conducting fellows at Tanglewood where he first worked with the man who would become his mentor and colleague, Leonard Bernstein. The next year, Mr. Bernstein invited the 26-year-old Mr. Stahl to be Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and a few years later asked him to take over the music directorship of West Side Story on Broadway and for its European tour. After serving as Assistant Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony for four seasons under Thomas Schippers, Mr. Bernstein again called on David Stahl to assist him when he made his legendary recording of West Side Story.
