Background
His father, Konrad Meister, is a pianist and professor of piano at the Musikhochschule Hannover. His mother is also a piano teacher. Besides his father, his teachers in Hannover included Martin Brauss and Eiji Oue.
His father, Konrad Meister, is a pianist and professor of piano at the Musikhochschule Hannover. His mother is also a piano teacher. Besides his father, his teachers in Hannover included Martin Brauss and Eiji Oue.
Meister studied piano and conducting at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover. Meister also studied music at the Salzburg Mozarteum, with such teachers as Dennis Russell Davies and Karl Kamper.
His half-brother, Rudolf Meister, is also a pianist and is Rector of the Musikhochschule Mannheim. From 2001 to 2002, Meister was an assistant conductor at the Theater Erfurt. He has also worked as a Kapellmeister at the Staatsoper Hannover.
In September 2005, he became Generalmusikdirektor of Heidelberg, then the youngest general music director of Germany.
In October 2008, he extended his Heidelberg contract through 2012, at which time his Heidelberg tenure concluded. In September 2010, Meister became Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (Vienna RSO), with an initial contract of four years.
In February 2015, the orchestra announced the extension of his Vienna RSO contract through 2018. With the Vienna RSO, he has commercially recorded music of Gottfried von Einem and of Béla Bartók.
In September 2009, Meister made his United States conducting debut with San Francisco Opera.
Meister continues to perform chamber music in a clarinet-piano duo with Clemens Trautmann.