After 40 years, Stephen Gunzenhauser is stepping down as music director of the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra. The conductor has announced that the 2019-2020 season will be his last.
Gunzenhauser’s name may be a familiar one far beyond his stomping grounds of Pennsylvania and Delaware, thanks to his tireless work on behalf of the Marco Polo and Naxos labels. With over a hundred releases in the current catalogue, Gunzenhauser has recorded works by Ernest Bloch, Antonin Dvořák, Reinhold Gliere, Karl Goldmark, Anton Rubinstein, and many others, carving out a niche for himself by documenting lesser-known repertoire and offering low-cost options to the bigger-named competition, especially at a time when there weren’t many budget alternatives to the “majors.”
Gunzenhauser worked as an assistant to Igor Markevitch in Monte Carlo and Leopold Stokowski in New York before becoming executive and artistic director of the Wilmington Music School in 1974. Five years later, he was appointed music director of both the Delaware Symphony Orchestra and the Lancaster Symphony. Gunzenhauser led the Delaware Symphony through the end of the 2001-2002 season. He was named principal conductor of the Bogota Philharmonic in 2004.
Naxos and Marco Polo have sold more than two million copies of his recordings, lending credence to his assertion that he is the fifth most recorded American conductor.
Gunzenhauser raised the level of the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra from community to professional status. Following his retirement, he plans to focus on the Endless Mountain Music Festival, with which he has been closely involved since its inception in 2006.
The Lancaster Symphony was founded in 1947. Gunzenhauser is only the second music director in the orchestra’s 72 year history.
More information about the Lancaster Symphony at lancastersymphony.org.
Gunzenhauser conducts Anton Rubinstein’s “Ocean” Symphony: