On the international concert stage Wiebke Lehmkuhl is a highly sought-after soloist and gives regular guest appearances with major orchestras, for instance the Tonhalle-Orchester in Zurich, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the Bamberg Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, as well as in Bilbao, Tokyo and Shanghai and with the Swedish Symphony Orchestra. She sang at the inauguration concert of the Elbphilharmonie with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock. She is also highly in demand at festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival and the Festival La folle journée in Nantes. Wiebke Lehmkuhl is a regular guest at the Bayreuth Festival and made her debut at the DNO in Amsterdam in a new production of Handel’s Jephtha. In the 2018/19 season she made her debut at the Royal Opera House in London as Erda in Wagner´s Rhinegold.
Her concert repertory includes Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Christmas Oratorio, Mozart’s Requiem, Mahler’s Symphonies No.2 and No.3 and Das Lied von der Erde as well as Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder.
Wiebke Lehmkuhl regularly works with conductors such as Philippe Jordan, Teodor Currentzis, Daniele Gatti, Marc Minkowski, Hans-Christoph Rademann, Reinhard Goebel, Ottavio Dantone, Franz-Welser Möst, Riccardo Chailly, Kent Nagano, Ivor Bolton and Daniel Harding. In addition, Wiebke Lehmkuhl also had the opportunity to work with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen.
A number of CD releases are available documenting Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s artistic work, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Leipzig’s Gewandhausorchester under Riccardo Chailly (Decca), and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Magnificat with the RIAS Chamber Choir and Berlin’s Akademie für Alte Musik under Hans-Christoph Rademann (harmonia mundi).
Contralto Wiebke Lehmkuhl was born in Oldenburg and studied singing under Ulla Groenewold and Hanna Schwarz at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, graduating with distinction. Following guest engagements at Kiel Opera House and at the Hamburg and Hanover State Opera, Wiebke Lehmkuhl took up her first full-time engagement at Zurich Opera House while she was still studying. In 2012 she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. She has had further engagements in Der Ring des Nibelungen (stage director: Günter Krämer, conductor Philippe Jordan) at the Opéra de Bastille in Paris and at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich where she sang in the production of Götterdämmerung conducted by Kent Nagano.
