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Nathalie Stutzmann is the Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the second woman in history to lead a major American orchestra. She was Principal Guest Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2021-2024.
On the symphonic stage, Nathalie’s 2025-26 season includes major debuts with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Berlin, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. She also returns to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Oslo Philharmonic. In Atlanta, her season features key pillars of the Romantic repertoire, including Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6, Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, concluding the Beethoven Project, a cycle she began with the orchestra in the previous season.
Nathalie has developed a close and ongoing connection with the Bayreuth Festival, where she conducted Wagner’s Tannhäuser in both 2023 and 2024. Her interpretation was met with exceptional acclaim, with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praising her as “a genius who makes the music irresistible”, and she was named Best Conductor of the Year at the 2024 Oper! Awards. In 2026, she returns to Bayreuth for the Festival’s 150th anniversary to lead, for the first time at the festival's Festspielhaus, a new production of Rienzi.
In a season marked by opera, she will also make her debut in the Munich opera pit at the Bayerische Staatsoper, conducting a new production of Gounod’s Faust. She opens the 2025–26 season at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam with Tosca, following her highly successful 2024-25 season closer conducting Carmen at La Monnaie in Brussels.
An exclusive recording artist with Warner Classics/Erato, Nathalie’s first symphonic release on the label—Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 and American Suite with the Atlanta Symphony—was released in August 2024 and earned her cover recognition on Gramophone magazine. The album was featured by The New York Times in its list of “5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now,” highlighting it among the season’s must-hear recordings. It also received OPUS Klassik nominations for both Best Conductor and Best Symphonic Recording of the Year.
This followed her 2023 OPUS Klassik win for Concerto Recording of the Year, awarded for her album featuring Glière and Mosolov harp concertos with Xavier de Maistre and the WDR Sinfonieorchester. In 2022, she also released the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Haochen Zhang and The Philadelphia Orchestra, which Gramophone hailed as “a brilliant collaboration that I urge you not to miss”.
Nathalie started her studies at a very young age in piano, bassoon, and cello, and studied conducting with the legendary Finnish teacher Jorma Panula. As one of the world’s most celebrated contraltos, she has made over 80 recordings and received numerous international accolades. She has been named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and in 2025 was appointed an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music.