In addition, the Orchestra has always maintained good and intensive relationships with important guest conductors, i.e. Richard Strauss, Ernest Ansermet, Karl Böhm, John Barbirolli and Georg Solti. The list of famous names ranges from Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms to Claudio Arrau and David Oistrach right up to Keith Jarrett, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Gidon Kremer and the Arditti Quartet. With the beginning of the 2018/19 season, Cornelius Meister took over as General Music Director.

Early on already, the Staatsorchester transposed the findings of historic performance practice into its operatic productions. The stylistic brilliance of the Staatsorchester is not least expressed in a long list of key performances of contemporary music, including Luigi Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore and Helmut Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. In 2002 the Staatsorchester was voted ’Orchestra of the Year’ by the magazine Opernwelt. This ’innovative tradition’ reaches right back into the 19th century: In addition to the German premiere of Verdi’s Falstaff in Stuttgart it was one of the first orchestras in Germany to stage its own production of the entire Ring cycle – Der Ring des Nibelungen. The tradition carried on with the premiere of Ariadne auf Naxos under Richard Strauss in 1912, the premieres of Paul Hindemith’s one-act pieces in 1921 and the German premiere of Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler. Premieres of past decades include works by Carl Orff, Krzysztof Penderecki, Philipp Glass, Hans Zender, Rolf Riehm, Wolfgang Rihm, Adriana Hölszky, Gérard Pesson and Hans Thomalla.