Biography
Hannah von Wiehler is a trailblazing conductor who leads orchestras across Europe, the USA, and Asia, and served for 8 years as Music Director of the UK’s Orchestra VOX.
Known for combing fierce creativity with entrepreneurship, von Wiehler launched Orchestra VOX in Oxford, UK in 2016 – a chamber orchestra dedicated to the intersection of classical music and social impact. From 2016 to 2024, she conducted over 100 concerts, operas, and multimedia performances which she wrote and designed.
The 2025–26 season features major debuts with the Tahoe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Verdi’s Requiem), and London’s Gothic Opera (conducting the UK stage premiere of Offenbach’s Die Rheinnixen), alongside return collaborations with leading European orchestras including the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, and a tour of Estonia with the acclaimed Hoffman Ball Gala.
Highlights of recent seasons include von Wiehler’s debut at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall with the Sejong Soloists, where she conducted the world premiere of Haemosu’s Celestial Chariot Ride, by Augusta Read Thomas, as well as debuts with leading European orchestras such as Italy’s Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, and France’s Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. Von Wiehler appears frequently in the UK, on numerous occasions with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Opera Holland Park, and the London Chamber Orchestra (with whom, in addition to concert work, she also has recorded two albums of the works of Ruth Gipps and Benjamin Britten). Before the outbreak of war in 2022, she conducted frequently in Ukraine and Russia, including orchestras like the International Symphony Orchestra Lviv, the Kaluga Symphony Orchestra and Yakutsk State Symphony Orchestra.
As Music Director of Orchestra VOX, her daring programming has included UK premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Steve Reich, and Harrison Birtwistle, an ambitious double-bill opera of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, and multimedia performances such as her original project, Ophelia: an exploration of the psychological intricacies of Shakespeare’s character Ophelia from Hamlet, featuring the music of composers Hans Abrahamsen, Sergei Prokofiev, and fused elements of film and live theatre. Throughout her tenure, she also prioritised experimenting with friendly, non-traditional performance spaces in order to encourage wider community access to classical music, and as such the orchestra has performed in homeless shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, refugee detention centres, and even bars, in addition to traditional concert halls.
In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, von Wiehler sought a way for Orchestra VOX to fight for beauty in an isolated world, and launched the Chrysalis Project: a multi-national initiative connecting Orchestra VOX to internationally renowned film-makers, choreographers, and composers from five countries (the UK, New Zealand, Burkina Faso, Russia, the United States). Von Wiehler led this project to create a series of short films, one filmed in each country – forging connections between multiple artistic genres and across continents – a way of instilling a message of new hope in a time of darkness.
She has assisted Simone Young at the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, D.C.) and Barbara Hannigan at the London Symphony Orchestra. In the 2023-2024 season, she was the Assistant Conductor at France’s Opéra National de Bordeaux. In 2022, she trained at the Tanglewood Conducting Seminar, and was a Visiting Conducting Fellow at the Verbier Festival.
She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, at bachelor’s from Georgetown University in Russian Literature, and studied violin performance Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
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Born to American parents, von Wiehler was raised in Moscow, where she developed an early passion in for the art, music, and stories that originated behind the Iron Curtain. Her musical gifts were initially cultivated at Moscow’s State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire as a student of the violin. She went on to obtain her Bachelors Degree in Russian Literature at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., where – at the age of 22 – she developed a programme to find musical talent in the North Causasus region of Russia, in association with Clive Gillinson and Carnegie Hall.
For nearly two years, von Wiehler served as the personal administrative assistant to Valery Gergiev, as well as Director of Special Projects for the Mariinsky Foundation of America. In these intensely enriching and fascinating roles, she worked closely on all matters from programming to touring, from to fundraising to producing festivals for the Mariinsky Theatre (including, for instance, in Vladivostok). During this time, and with Maestro Gergiev’s mentorship and encouragement, von Wiehler began to turn her attentions towards conducting, undertaking formal lessons with Leonid Korchmar whilst resident in St. Petersburg. Now based in between New Haven and London, she has also received generous coaching from Jessica Cottis and Karen Kamensek, and has participated in masterclasses with Paavo Järvi and Johannes Schlaefli.
In 2021, von Wiehler completed her doctorate on the canon of Rodion Shchedrin at the University of Oxford, where she attended as a Rhodes Scholar. The Rhodes Scholarship places emphasis on attracting people who are committed to using their skills for the betterment of the world. Inspired by this environment, von Wiehler champions the belief that music has the potential to create a cultural and societal impact not stymied by global politics. Her fundamental aims as a conductor therefore hold sacred, at their core, the drive to use music as a means to effect change for greater societal good. She continues her scholarship with recent research published in Cambridge Opera Journal.
Although Russian music is her first love, von Wiehler’s rapidly expanding symphonic and operatic repertoire spans the music of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. She enjoys a natural affinity for contemporary music, with a particular passion for contemporary opera. With Orchestra VOX she has staged the Oxford premieres of The Cave (Steve Reich) and The Corridor (Harrison Birtwistle), in addition to producing fully stage performances of canonical works such as La Traviata, Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin.
“Although her interests extend far beyond the Russian sphere, it is clearly some of the music von Wiehler knows and loves best. She came into her own in the Tchaikovsky, demonstrating a nuanced knowledge of the score and a great depth of musicality.”