Biography

Claus Peter Flor conducted all of the leading orchestras in Asia. These include orchestras in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong in China, the NHK, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and the Osaka Symphony Orchestra in Japan as well as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

He received multiple invitations by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Australia.

In the US, Canada and Brazil Flor appeared as guest conductor at several orchestras, among them the New York Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.

Claus Peter Flor worked as Principal Guest Conductor at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, at which he also served as artistic advisor. He was also named principal guest conductor at the Phion Orchestra (formerly HET Gelders) for the 2018/19 season.

Flor’s repertoire places major emphasis on the great symphonic works of the Romantic period up to the present. He is particularly focused on a line of development that is traced by the names of Schubert – Bruckner – Brahms – Mahler – Shostakovich. However, working on the choral symphonic repertoire from Bach to Tom Johnson is just as important to his artistic identity.

From 1984 to 1992, Claus Peter Flor was Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester (now the Konzerthausorchester Berlin), with whom he toured Great Britain, Austria, the US, Switzerland, Japan, and France. He was appointed Generalmusikdirektor for life in 1985. Flor was a member of the Kuratorium Schauspielhaus Berlin led by Peter Schreier, and one of the conductors at the Schauspielhaus opening concert on October 1^st, 1984.

Opera work also constitutes an important part of Claus Peter Flor’s artistic career. He headed productions of La Traviata, Lohengrin and Die Zauberflöte at the Berlin State Opera – the latter two also at the Deutsche Oper Berlin –, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Hamburg State Opera (production by Johannes Schaaf). At the Bavarian State Opera he led Madame Butterfly with Dame Gwyneth Jones (following a personal invitation by maestro W. Sawallisch), and follow-up performances of the Freischütz production by Joachim Herz at the Staatsoper Dresden, which were part of the house’s re-opening festivities.

In 2003, Claus Peter Flor worked with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Dutch National Opera to perform Weber’s Euryanthe – in a version edited by Gustav Mahler and premiered by the same in Vienna – to sensational acclaim (production by David Pountney).

For twelve years Claus Peter Flor was a recurring guest conductor at the Toulouse opera house and staged spectacular productions of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Die Walküre, Eugen d’Albert's Tiefland, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Le Prophète, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zauberflöte, Le Nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte, Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Charles Gounod's Faust. They were accompanied by new productions, such as Humperdinck's Hänsel & Gretel (production: Mariame Clément) at the Opéra National de Paris (Palais Garnier) in 2013, and Wagner's Siegfried (production: McVicar) in Strasbourg.
In the US Claus Peter Flor was entrusted with resuming production of Puccini's La Bohème at the Dallas Opera as well a new production of Mozart's Zauberflöte at the opera house in Houston, TX.

Claus Peter Flor is strongly committed to contemporary music. He staged numerous premieres, among them the works of Siegfried Matthus, Günther Kochan, Enjott Schneider's Double Concerto for Sheng, Percussion and Orchestra (premiere 2015, Beijing), Tom Johnson's Bonhoeffer-Oratorium (premiere 1998, with the DSO Berlin), the concerto for trumpet and orchestra Im Nebel by Toshio Hosokawa (2018), the oratorio Libera Nos by Rafael Kubelik, which premiered at the Lucerne Festival, the Violin Concerto by Donnacha Dennehy, with Augustin Hadelich as the soloist and the Philharmonie Zuidnederland (premiere October 2021).

Claus Peter Flor headed numerous exemplary and award-winning CD productions.

He recorded all of Ludwig van Beethoven's piano concertos with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and Peter Rösel as the soloist (Berlin Classics); further recordings were made with this orchestra's first concertmaster, Michael Erxleben, of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, as well as Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 2 and Bruch's Kol Nidrei with Peter Bruns.

Recordings of Bohuslav Martinů's symphonies (1-2 & 5-6) with the Konzerthausorchester serve as further proof of a high-quality interpretation that is acknowledged internationally.

Mendelssohn's Ein Sommernachtstraum with Lucia Popp, Marjana Lipovšek and the Bamberg Symphony choir and orchestra, a production for RCA Victor (Red Seal), is as memorable as the excellent recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

From 2008 to 2014, Flor served as Music Director to the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he worked on a recording of Josef Suk's Asrael Symphony that met with worldwide critical acclaim, as well as recordings of Bedřich Smetana's Ma Vlast and several works of Antonín Dvořák. All recordings were produced by BIS.

Together with the Bamberg Symphony Flor created a recording of the collected orchestral works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy that garnered as much recognition internationally as did a production of Max Bruch's Moses oratorio.

A special place among the recordings of less conspicuous works is taken up by a re-recording of Hans Pfitzner's opera Das Christelflein (created for the Bayerischer Rundfunk).

Recordings of Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet with the Philharmonia Orchestra London for RCA (Red Seal) are highly regarded. Claus Peter Flor also recorded César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor and Symphonic Variations (soloist: Rudolf Firkušný) with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London for RCA Records.

He worked on a recording of the symphonies 1-3-5-7-9 by Gustav Mahler with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, whose Music Director he served as between 2018 to 2023. These Recordings were introduced to the international public in October 2023 as part of the Mahler Festival in Milano.

Claus Peter Flor was born in Leipzig in 1953. He studied the violin and clarinet in Weimar and Leipzig, and completed the Staatsexamen majoring in violin. He went on to study conducting under Rolf Reuter and Kurt Masur, and was the recipient of multiple Mendelssohn Scholarships for outstanding performance. Claus Peter Flor participated in three conducting competitions and placed first in all of them: 1979 at the 1^st Grzegorz Fitelberg Competition in Katowice, 1982 at the conductors' competition In Lucerne that concluded the master courses held by Rafael Kubelik, and 1983 at the Nikolai Malko Competition in Copenhagen. 

He perfected his education as a  student of both Rafael Kubelik and Kurt Sanderling.