Anja Bihlmaier’s musical intuition, charisma, and passion allied with precision make her
one of the leading conductors of her generation. Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC
Philharmonic since September 2024, she has become a firm favourite at the BBC Proms
where she appears annually.
In the 2025/26 season, Anja Bihlmaier will conduct the Dresden Philharmonic and the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne for the first time. She continues her residency at the Beethovenfest Bonn and conduct the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with which she will open the Musikfest Berlin. In the 2024/25 season, she made her debuts with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic, both of which have invited her back. She also made her debut with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Orchestre National de Lyon, and returned to the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Madrid National Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras.
Anja Bihlmaier has a wide-ranging repertoire that includes Haydn, Mahler, Strauss, B. A.
Zimmermann to Sibelius, Bartók, Dvořák, Shostakovich, Debussy, Britten, Galina
Ustvolskaya and Unsuk Chin.
In spring 2026, she conducts her first production at the Hamburg State Opera ("Elektra"). In the past two seasons she conducted new productions at the Berlin Staatsoper
("Cassandra") and Glyndebourne Festival ("Carmen") – both debuts, and both leading to
immediate reinvitations. In her early career she held positions at the opera houses of
Hanover, Chemnitz and Kassel, and went on to conduct at the Vienna Volksoper and
across Scandinavia, notably in Malmo ("A Midsummer Night’s Dream"), Tampere ("Der fliegende Holländer") and Oslo ("La traviata").
Anja Bihlmaier was Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest in Den Haag from 2021 to 2025 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Lahti Sinfonia from 2020 to 2024. In the past year both orchestras have released recordings with her conducting – Ravel with Residentie Orkest and Yeol Eum Son for Naïve, and Prokofiev with Christian Poltera for BIS.
After studying at the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik with Scott Sandmeier, Anja Bihlmaier was awarded a scholarship at the Salzburg Mozarteum and went on to study with Dennis
Russell Davies and Jorge Rotter. She was accepted into the Deutsche Dirigentenforum
and received a scholarship from the Brahmsgesellschaft Baden-Baden.