The WDR Symphony Has Had Eight Chief Conductors in Sixty-Two Years. All Eight Were Men. The Ninth Put a Composer Who Was Not Allowed to Study at the Paris Conservatoire Into Her First Concert.

Marie Jacquot conducted her first concert as chief conductor of the WDR Sinfonieorchester on Friday 18 September, at 20:00 in the Kölner Philharmonie. The orchestra called the programme Aufbruch, which means a departure, or a setting out.

She is French, she was born in 1990, and she is on an initial four-year contract.

She is also the ninth person to hold the post, and the first who is not a man. The WDR has not made that the headline: none of its three announcements about her that Cadenza read (January 2024, 10 April 2026 and 14 September 2026) mentions it. This piece is not going to make it the whole story either, because what she actually programmed is more interesting than the fact of her appointment.

The lineage

The orchestra was founded in 1947, as the Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, under the Allied occupation authorities. For its first seventeen years it had no principal conductor and worked with guests.

Then it started appointing.

Sixty-two years from Dohnányi's first season to Jacquot's, and seventy-nine from the orchestra's founding. Eight appointments, then a ninth.

That is the number worth having. The WDR's own page on the orchestra, when Cadenza read it on 25 September 2026, named only four of Jacquot's predecessors; the complete list, in order, is the one Wikipedia keeps in English and German, and it is what makes the count possible.

What she put in the middle of the programme

Four works, in this order: the Prelude to Act 1 of Lohengrin; Chopin's Second Piano Concerto, with Yulianna Avdeeva; Augusta Holmès's Andromède; and Scriabin's Le poème de l'extase.

Three of those are repertoire. The third is not.

Augusta Holmès was born in Paris on 16 December 1847 to an Irish father and died there on 28 January 1903. She was not allowed to study at the Paris Conservatoire and took lessons privately instead. She published early works under the name Hermann Zenta. She became a pupil of César Franck, whom she considered her real master, and she led the group of his students who commissioned his tomb medallion from Rodin.

Camille Saint-Saëns is said to have proposed marriage to her and been refused. In Harmonie et Mélodie (1885), reviewing her Les Argonautes, he wrote that women, like children, know no obstacle and that their will breaks everything, and then: "Mademoiselle Holmès est bien femme; c'est une « outrancière »." Mademoiselle Holmès is very much a woman; she is an "extremist" (Cadenza's translation). It was not simple praise: the same review mixes sympathy for her originality with a warning that she should not take that sympathy as encouragement to carry on in the same direction.

About seventeen years, and then a hundred and twenty-six

Here is the part that makes the programming choice a statement rather than a gesture.

Andromède was composed in 1883. It was not performed until 14 January 1900.

About seventeen years before its premiere, for a symphonic poem by a composer who was, by 1889, prominent enough to be commissioned to write a work for the centenary of the French Revolution requiring around 1,200 performers.

When it finally reached the concert platform, at the initiative of Édouard Colonne, it was, in Bru Zane's words, very well received. Amédée Boutarel wrote in Le Ménestrel that the work deserved to rank with its elders and was a credit both to contemporary artistic production and to Colonne's initiative.

So: a woman who was not allowed to study at the Conservatoire wrote a piece, waited about seventeen years for its premiere, was praised when it came, and has been rarely played since. The WDR Sinfonieorchester's first woman chief conductor put it in her opening programme, between Chopin and Scriabin, as the first work after the interval.

Wagner at the start, and an echo of him in the middle

Holmès first heard Wagner at thirteen and pressed for his works to be played at the Concerts Populaires in Paris. The Palazzetto Bru Zane's note on Andromède points to one result: in the episode where Perseus rides Pegasus to save Andromeda, the theme over creeping chromatic bass appears to have been inspired by the Ride of the Valkyries.

Jacquot opened the concert with Wagner.

The WDR says this is how she builds programmes, setting known and unknown works from different periods in relation to one another. "Mich interessiert, wie Werke miteinander ins Gespräch treten," she said in the WDR's announcement of the concert: she is interested in how works enter into conversation with one another (Cadenza's translation). Putting the Lohengrin prelude before a symphonic poem in which Bru Zane hears an echo of the Ride of the Valkyries, by a seldom-played composer, is, on Cadenza's reading, that principle doing actual work, rather than a sentence in a brochure. Werner Häußner's review, below, says Holmès avoids direct references to Wagner.

One more detail, from Bru Zane: Holmès wrote the poem behind the piece herself, eleven quatrains of French alexandrines, and Andromède does not end in triumph. It ends pianissimo.

Who she is

Jacquot was born in Paris in 1990 and grew up in Chartres. She began as a competitive tennis player while learning the piano and then the trombone, and gave up tennis for music at fifteen.

She studied in Vienna with Uroš Lajovic and in Weimar with Nicolás Pasquet, then did the unglamorous work: assistant to Kirill Petrenko at the Bavarian State Opera in 2016, first Kapellmeisterin and deputy general music director in Würzburg from 2016 to 2019, first Kapellmeisterin at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 2019 to 2022.

Roughly three years and nine months from her first work with the orchestra to the podium. She also holds the music directorship of the Royal Danish Orchestra, from the 2024-25 season on an initial five years, and was the Vienna Symphony's principal guest conductor from 2023-24 to 2025-26. In February 2024 she was named Révélation cheffe d'orchestre at the Victoires de la Musique Classique.

What the orchestra said, and what the first reviews said

Katrin Vernau, the WDR's director-general, said Jacquot combines artistic excellence with curiosity, openness and a particular ability to excite people and open new ways into music. In April she had said that bringing people together, with the orchestra, was an important concern of Jacquot's.

Jacquot's own line on the orchestra, from April, is the one musicians will recognise: "Das WDR Sinfonieorchester vereint Qualität und Präzision mit Leidenschaft und einer ganz besonderen Freude am Risiko." Quality and precision, with passion and a very particular joy in risk (Cadenza's translation).

Cadenza found three reviews in web searches on 24 September 2026. Daniel Janz, on the blog klassik-begeistert.de on 20 September, judged Andromède the best-performed work of the evening and was more reserved about the Chopin and the Scriabin. Werner Häußner, on the Online Merker website on 20 September, called the evening a justly celebrated start. He heard Avdeeva play the Chopin with a pearly, glittering coolness, praised Jacquot's shaping of Andromède and of the Scriabin, and wrote that Andromède deserves to be played again. He also wrote that Holmès, an enthusiastic follower of Wagner, avoids direct references to him for all the opulence of her sound. Norbert Hornig, for klassik.com on 22 September, praised the whole evening and called Andromède a remarkable accent in the repertoire.

The rest of the season, which is stranger than you would guess

The orchestra announced 75 concerts for 2026-27 in April. It also plays The Lord of the Rings live to picture for the film's twenty-fifth anniversary, in the Lanxess Arena in Cologne on 19 December 2026 and the Rudolf Weber-Arena in Oberhausen on 20 December 2026. It is also mounting its first Classical Pride, a concert for Christopher Street Day (CSD) with queer classical musicians, on 26 June 2027 in the Kölner Philharmonie. The WDR said in April that its Konzert mit der Maus would leave North Rhine-Westphalia for the first time; the Musikfest Berlin billed its Berlin premiere for 6 September 2026. The WDR's April announcement also listed guest dates in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands for the 2026-27 season.

A radio orchestra with a public remit, in other words, behaving like one.

In April it was a press conference

On 10 April 2026 the WDR put Jacquot in front of the press in its own Funkhaus and announced a season. Five months later she opened it. The photograph at the top of this piece is from that day.

Cadenza carries auditions and schemes with open deadlines, free to musicians, on its jobs board and its competitions board. It has spent September 2026 counting what these appointments actually contain, among them a New York principal horn chair that had no permanent holder for eight years and eight months.

If you want to hear it. The WDR billed the inaugural concert for a livestream on the ARD Klassik YouTube channel and for live broadcast on WDR 3; when Cadenza checked on 25 September 2026, YouTube showed the ARD Klassik video of the concert as private. The WDR said in April that a great many of the orchestra's concerts would again be available on demand in the ARD Mediathek.

The question is for whoever programmes the 2027-28 season anywhere. Andromède waited about seventeen years after it was written for its premiere and has been rarely played since, and when a conductor put it in a flagship opening concert, klassik-begeistert's critic judged it the best-performed work of the evening. How many other scores are still waiting, and who is going to play them?

Sources: the WDR's own press release of 14 September 2026 announcing the inaugural concert, published via Presseportal and read in full, which is the source for the date, time, venue, the title Aufbruch, the complete programme, Yulianna Avdeeva as soloist, the livestream arrangements, and the quotations from Katrin Vernau and Marie Jacquot; and the WDR's press release of 10 April 2026, also read in full, for Jacquot's birth year and birthplace, the initially four-year term, the 75 concerts of the 2026-27 season, the Konzert mit der Maus leaving North Rhine-Westphalia for the first time, the guest appearances in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, the Lord of the Rings dates of 19 and 20 December, the first Classical Pride, and her remark about quality, precision and a joy in risk. The Musikfest Berlin's page for the Konzert mit der Maus gives the Berlin date, and the Kölner Philharmonie's page for Classical Pride gives its date and venue. The Rudolf Weber-Arena's event page for The Lord of the Rings gives the Oberhausen concert of 20 December 2026 under the arena's current name; the WDR's release calls the venue the Arena Oberhausen, its name until 2001. The WDR's page on the orchestra, read on 25 September 2026, confirms the 1947 founding and names four of the earlier chief conductors.

The chief-conductor lineage from Christoph von Dohnányi in 1964 to Cristian Măcelaru's departure in 2025, the orchestra's founding in 1947 under the Allied occupation authorities as the Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, the absence of any principal conductor before 1964, Jacquot's December 2022 first guest appearance and the January 2024 announcement of her appointment are from Wikipedia's articles on the orchestra in English and German; the list of chief conductors there carries no citations, and the December 2022 debut, the January 2024 announcement and the four-year term are confirmed by the WDR's own announcement of January 2024. France Musique reported on 25 January 2024 that she is the first woman in the post. Her upbringing in Chartres and her tennis before music are from her France Musique interview of February 2024; her studies with Uroš Lajovic and Nicolás Pasquet, and the Royal Danish Orchestra's five-year term are from English Wikipedia; the Vienna Symphony post and its dates, the Petrenko assistantship and the 2024 Victoires de la Musique Classique award are from the WDR's biography of Jacquot; her titles in Würzburg and at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein are as the WDR's January 2024 announcement gives them.

On Augusta Holmès: her dates, Irish father, the Conservatoire, the Hermann Zenta pseudonym, her studies with César Franck, the Rodin commission for Franck's tomb, the 1889 Ode triomphale and its scale are from Wikipedia in English and French; the Saint-Saëns passage is quoted from the 1885 edition of Harmonie et Mélodie, pages 228 to 230, as digitised by the Internet Archive. The composition date of 1883, the premiere on 14 January 1900 at Colonne's initiative, Amédée Boutarel's assessment in Le Ménestrel, Holmès's own eleven-quatrain poem, the echo of the Ride of the Valkyries in the Perseus episode and the pianissimo ending are from the Palazzetto Bru Zane's Mediabase entry for Andromède, read in full. None of the sources Cadenza read gives a reason why she did not study there, so none is given here. Andromède was recorded in April 1991 by the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz under Samuel Friedmann and released by Marco Polo in 1994 (8.223449), so "rarely played" is the claim, not "unplayed".

The interval of 46,268 days is Cadenza's arithmetic between the two dated performances. The reviews quoted are Daniel Janz's for klassik-begeistert.de (20 September 2026), Werner Häußner's for Online Merker (20 September 2026) and Norbert Hornig's for klassik.com (22 September 2026); Janz's and Hornig's confirm that the concert ran in the printed order, with Andromède after the interval.

Photographs: Marie Jacquot, and Jacquot with Katrin Vernau and Sebastian König, at the WDR Funkhaus on 10 April 2026, both by Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The Kölner Philharmonie main entrance, photographed on 20 March 2012, also by Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Correction, 25 September 2026: this article originally said in its headline that Jacquot opened her first concert with Holmès; she opened it with Wagner. It said in its headline and text that the Paris Conservatoire would not admit Holmès; the sources Cadenza read say only that she was not allowed to study there, or that she never attended, and none says by whom. It said no review had appeared; two had been published on 20 September. It said the WDR publishes the full list of its chief conductors on its own site; the WDR's page names four of them. It quoted Saint-Saëns in English as if in his words and called the remark praise; the French original is now given, with its context. It said Holmès had Irish parents; the sources agree only on her Irish father. It described Katrin Vernau's April remark as being about bringing people "into the same room"; she spoke of bringing people together. It said Jacquot is thirty-six; the sources Cadenza could check give her birth year, 1990, but not her birthday, so she was 35 or 36 on 18 September 2026. It said she reached the French Open as a junior; the France Musique interview that English Wikipedia cites for it does not mention it. It said she was chorus master in Würzburg; the WDR gives her post there as first Kapellmeisterin and deputy general music director. It called her the Vienna Symphony's first female principal guest conductor, which Cadenza could not confirm in the appointment's announcements. It said Andromède went more or less unplayed for a century after its premiere; it was recorded in April 1991, and the piece now says it has been rarely played. It called Jacquot the first woman to be made chief conductor of a major German radio orchestra, which Cadenza could not confirm; the piece now says only that she is the WDR Sinfonieorchester's first woman chief conductor. It gave the Oberhausen venue of the Lord of the Rings concert its former name, the Arena Oberhausen; it is now the Rudolf Weber-Arena. It said the concert was streamed on YouTube and carried on WDR 3, and that a great many of the orchestra's concerts stay available on demand in the ARD Mediathek, from anywhere, for nothing; the WDR had billed the livestream and the broadcast, and its April release says that a great many concerts would again be available on demand there, but not from where or at what cost. When Cadenza checked on 25 September 2026, the YouTube video of the concert was private.

Cover photograph: Marie Jacquot, photographed at the WDR Funkhaus in Cologne on 10 April 2026, the day the orchestra presented her as its next chief conductor. Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.