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Things move quickly for Petr Popelka.
Though the 40-year-old Czech native just began his conducting career in 2019, he already has two major international posts: chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony and general music director designate of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Germany.
In March 2024, he substituted for Herbert Blomstedt with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, after the elder conductor suffered a fall and had to withdraw from his scheduled appearances. Popelka returned to the CSO in 2025, and just a year later, he will lead the ensemble’s season-opening concerts Sept. 17-19.
In short, Popelka is enjoying the kind of meteoric career trajectory over the last seven years that few if any other rising conductors worldwide can match. “I’m very thankful,” he said. “You never know how it’s going to develop. I am very, very happy to have so many opportunities to work with great orchestras and [perform] fantastic music.”
The Sept. 17-19 program will be CSO’s first with violinist Hilary Hahn after a medical hiatus starting in 2024, due to pinched nerves and a herniated spinal disc. It will mark Popelka’s first opportunity to work with Hahn, who served as the CSO’s artist-in-residence during 2021-24. She will be the soloist in Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64.
“There’s a singing quality to the Mendelssohn concerto that is really charming,” Hahn told St. Louis Magazine in 2023. “It’s also emotionally wrenching. Playing inside of the layers of emotional and rhythmic momentum is what’s really engrossing for me about this concerto. A lot of people learn it while they’re still students, so it’s a piece that travels with violinists throughout their lives.”
The second half of the program will be devoted to the Symphony No. 5 in F Major, Op. 76, by one of Popelka’s countrymen, Antonín Dvořák. Though not played as often as the composer’s Seventh, Eighth or Ninth symphonies, it is nonetheless one of the works in the form that the conductor most admires. “Since it’s the season opener, it’s so good to bring something that brings a positive energy to the orchestra and the public,” Popelka said. “That’s why we picked, in my eyes, some of the most positive music ever, which is Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5. It’s a symphony that not many people know, but if you listen to it once, it will fill you with a positive energy. It’s such fantastic music, and it brings some spirit to the audience. I think it is a good start to the season.”
To begin the program, Popelka chose Robert Schumann’s Overture to Manfred, which is based on a 1817 poem of the same title by Lord Byron. Schumann is one of the conductor’s “absolutely favorite” composers, and he’s excited to have a chance to play some of his music with the CSO.
Popelka’s path to the podium is highly unusual. Although he had had an interest in composing and conducting since childhood, he left his native Prague when he was around 18 to study the double bass at the Freiburg University of Music in Germany. While there, he made a point of poring over scores, especially those of contemporary German works, in the school’s library.
When he was 23, however, he joined the Dresden Staatskapelle, serving first as a section member of the double basses and later as associate principal. The ensemble’s intense work schedule, which includes playing for operas and touring, left him no time to pursue conducting or composing. At 30, realizing that he had never had the chance to follow his passions, he took a one-year sabbatical. He wrote music and participated in conducting masterclasses.
Eight years ago, he took part in the Malko Competition, an important contest for young conductors that is organized by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Although he did not win any prizes, he caught the attention of some orchestra members, who urged management to invite him back. For his return appearance, he led a children’s concert, and that performance in turn brought engagements with other ensembles, including the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, where he became chief conductor in August 2020, a post he has since left.
Feeling optimistic about the direction of his incipient conducting career, he resigned from the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2019. Just three years later, he was named chief conductor and artistic director of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, a post that brought him back to his homeland. In short, his path to success as a conductor was well underway.
When he first came to the CSO as a substitute, he was chief conductor designate of the Vienna Symphony, and fully took over the post in 2024-25. “During these two years, our has relationship developed really beautifully,“ he said. ”Many things are changing in [Vienna], and many new and young people are coming to the orchestra.” Concerts regularly sell out, and the orchestra is working on new projects in such realms as chamber music and education. “It’s such a positive time for the orchestra right now.”
The Vienna Philharmonic is the city’s main orchestra alongside the Vienna Symphony, but Popelka believes there is no competition between the two. Because Philharmonic members also play in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, that ensemble presents only eight to 10 sets of subscription concerts a season. “We are doing something completely different,” he said. “The Vienna Symphony, we are the orchestra of the city. We are paid by the city and not by the state. And we are playing many more concerts and in other locations than just the Musikverein and concert halls. So, the identification with the Viennese people with our orchestra is really great.”
In addition to his symphonic engagements, Popelka also has pursued opera assignments. In June, he was appointed general music director of the Bavarian State Opera, starting with the 2029-30 season. “I played in the Dresden Staatskapelle for 10 years,” he said, “and it is a very famous and traditional big concert orchestra, but also a great opera orchestra, playing in the Semperoper Dresden [the city’s opera house]. I learned so much in the opera and all of my conductor idols from the past, they all did opera and concerts in a good balance. Since I started conducting, it was clear to me that I didn’t want to do only opera or only symphonic music. I wish in my musical life to have a good balance.”
He made two guest conducting appearances with the Bavarian State Opera, including a production of Leos Janacek’s Kátya Kabanová 18 months ago, and Popelka and the orchestra just clicked. “It happened very immediately that we had a good contact, and there was big support from the orchestra side,” he said. He has high praise for the company and its orchestra. “It’s such a good group of people, and they are really proud to be part of the Bavarian State Opera,” he said. “When I was there, I had the feeling: ‘Here is the right place to make opera.’ ”
His appointment in Munich deepens Popelka’s longtime connection to the German-speaking world, starting with his musical studies at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and continuing with his time in Dresden and his present post in Vienna. “In the last two years, when I became part of the Viennese music life, it’s such a privilege and joy,” he said. “Culture and music have such high recognition. There is a big appreciation on the part of the Viennese public. If you say in Vienna that you are a musician, it means something.” And he believes much of that is true as well in Germany, which has become something of a second home for him.
In addition to his posts, Popelka also has quickly managed to build relationships with several top orchestras, where he appears regularly. In the United States, the ensembles are the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra and of course, the CSO.
“Of course, that’s something very special,” he said of his CSO season-opening appearance. “There’s maybe no other orchestra in the world, maybe only the Berlin Philharmonic, that has so many friends around all over the world. Wherever you are, musicians are talking about legendary Chicago Symphony recordings and of course, the legendary brass, and the sound of the orchestra. This orchestra has stayed something absolutely special.”
Along with his guest conducting engagements this season, he also will be making debuts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Orchestre National de France. “With debuts, you never know how it’s going to be,” he said. “Something that works with one orchestra doesn’t necessarily work with another orchestra. You really never know what is going to happen.”
Therefore, he picks repertoire with which he feels comfortable. But otherwise, he tries to convince himself that these heady debuts amount to just another week on the podium. “Either it works or not,” he said.
