Anja Bihlmaier is Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2021 to 2025 she was Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest The Hague. In the 2025/26 season she opened the Berliner Musikfest at the podium of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and will for the first time conduct the Dresden Philharmonic and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, as well as continuing her residency at the Beethovenfest Bonn. In addition, this season she will make her debuts with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and the Orchestre National de Lyon, and she will return to the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Madrid National Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the symphony orchestras of Sydney and Melbourne. In the past season she made her debut with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. Anja Bihlmaier has a wide-ranging repertoire, extending from Haydn through Mahler, Strauss, and B. A. Zimmermann to Sibelius, Bartók, Dvořák, Shostakovich, Debussy, Britten, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Unsuk Chin. In 2026 she will conduct her first production at the Hamburg State Opera with “Elektra”. In the past two seasons she conducted “Cassandra” at the Berlin State Opera and “Carmen” at the Glyndebourne Festival. Early in her career she held positions at the opera houses in Hanover, Chemnitz, and Kassel, and subsequently conducted at the Volksoper Vienna and throughout Scandinavia, especially in Malmö (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”), Tampere (“The Flying Dutchman”), and Oslo (“La Traviata”). After studying at the Freiburg University of Music with Scott Sandmeier, Anja Bihlmaier was a scholarship holder at the Salzburg Mozarteum and deepened her training with Dennis Russell Davies and Jorge Rotter. She was subsequently accepted into the Dirigentenforum and received a scholarship from the Brahms Society of Baden-Baden.
