The Württemberg Stuttgart State Orchestra has a history of over four hundred years, established in 1589 as the Court Orchestra of Württemberg. Over the generations there have been collaborations with musicians of distinction, among them Leonhard Lechner, the Frobergers, Niccolò Jommelli, Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg, Konradin Kreutzer, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Maria von Weber. Berlioz praised the orchestra, when he appeared with it as conductor, and in the 1880s Stuttgart was one of the first to stage the complete Ring cycle, conducted by the then general music director Herman Zumpe, who had assisted Wagner at the first Bayreuth Festival.

The tradition of first performances has included the première of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in...