On 1 November 2026, Madeleine Landlinger takes over as artistic and managing director of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. The date sounds like a fresh start, but falls in the middle of a season: the 2026/27 programme has been published since May, and chief conductor Jonathan Darlington’s contract has been extended until the end of the 2031/32 season. A new director cannot simply decree a new sound. Nor should she try.
The first change is likely to happen around the meeting table rather than on the music stand. An orchestra is not an instrument that its management can tune at will. It is an ensemble of highly specialised musicians, as well as an organisation with contracts, budgets, venues and an audience that does not come into being only when a new director takes office. Anyone hoping to make a difference here must first discover what is already working – and who has had a say in decisions so far.
The Season Is Already Composed
Programming has long lead times. Soloists, conductors and works are often booked years in advance; concert dates and production schedules cannot be rewritten at short notice. For Landlinger, this means that the first season can be a personal manifesto only to a limited extent. It is more of a testing ground. Which concerts find their audience? Where is there room for new formats? Which relationships with the city, schools or other cultural venues could be deepened?
This is no excuse for standing still. A programme is made up not just of titles, but also of connections: the order of the works, an accessible spoken introduction, a conversation with the performers or a thoughtful collaboration. Beethoven’s Seventh may appear on the programme as a familiar classic – yet it can still be heard differently if a concert takes the work’s rhythmic restlessness seriously, rather than selling it as a mere celebration of energy. The first lever for change is often not a spectacular novelty, but the question of why this piece sits alongside that one now.
Leadership Also Means Clarifying Responsibilities
The director’s office is not the conductor’s podium. It is responsible for the institutional and programming framework; artistic work in concert rests largely with the conductor, orchestra and soloists. That is precisely why Landlinger and Darlington need more than a good photograph to mark her arrival: a robust understanding of which decisions they will make together and where responsibilities lie. Darlington’s contract extension makes this collaboration a long-term undertaking, not an interim solution.
At her introduction, Landlinger announced a “strong culture of participation”. That is a promise, but not yet a method. Participation takes concrete forms: are musicians involved in projects early enough? Can ideas from within the ensemble actually be given a trial in the programme? And after an experiment, is there an assessment of what worked artistically – not just how many tickets were sold? An orchestra that draws on its experience does not automatically achieve unanimity. It gains the opportunity to address conflicts promptly and objectively.
Audiences Are Not Marketing Targets
The familiar demand that an orchestra should reach “new target groups” remains hollow unless it answers the question of what those people can expect in the concert hall. Lowering barriers can mean a shorter format, reliable information before the concert, different start times or collaborations that do not simply count new visitors, but give them a voice and reasons to return. At the same time, it would be a mistake to sweep aside the familiar as an obstacle. An audience is not backward-looking because it wants to hear Brahms. What matters is whether an institution combines the familiar with curiosity and introduces the unfamiliar without condescension.
The Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra approaches this change of leadership after an unsettled period. Bayerischer Rundfunk reported that the former director, Lucius Hemmer, was relieved of his duties in May and that legal proceedings over his dismissal are ongoing; the reasons cited publicly remained unclear. That makes team spirit more than a friendly turn of phrase. It must prove itself in everyday practice – through transparent decisions, dependable dialogue and artistic work that can withstand dissent.
So what can new orchestral leadership change first? Not the past, and hardly the programme already in print. It can change how the orchestra plans its future: who is heard, how responsibility is shared and how a programme becomes a shared offering. The first beat would then be not a grand solo, but a cue to which others can respond.
Original reviewed by the editors · 31 October 2026
