I

In May 2025, Michael Engelbrecht conducted with great success the revival premiere of Werther by Jules Massenet at the National Theater in Košice (Slovakia). The leading roles were performed by the international star singers Elena Maximova and Zurab Zurabishvili. This production received multiple glowing reviews. The leading opera site Opera Slovakia wrote, among other things:

Dutch conductor Michael Engelbrecht led the musicians with overview and control. Before the intermission, the orchestra played with unprecedented cohesion; after the break, the sound gained a strong romantic charge. The conductor deserves all praise.

In the 2025/2026 season, he will return to Košice to conduct several more performances of Werther.

In 2023, the Swiss Willem Mengelberg Stiftung awarded Michael Engelbrecht the Mengelberg Conducting Award. The jury report stated:

The board of directors of the Swiss Willem Mengelberg Stiftung is highly impressed by the Dutch conductor Michael Engelbrecht: Michael has an extraordinary conducting talent, with a clear and precise technique in communicating with an orchestra. Also, his interaction with musicians makes him very effective in conveying his musical vision of a score to the members of an orchestra. The board is also positive about his broad orientation with respect to repertoire: he feels at home with widely varying sorts of music. His background as a brass player is clearly audible in his attention for the lower sections of the orchestra, resulting in interpretations with a strong feeling for momentum and a warm orchestral sound.

In 2021, Michael won first prize at the Blue Danube / Béla Bartók International Opera Conducting Competition with the State Opera of Stara Zagora (Bulgaria). The program of this competition included four complete operas: Don Giovanni(Mozart), Carmen (Bizet), Pagliacci (Leoncavallo) and Bluebeard’s Castle (Bartók).
He was also first prize winner of the Budapest International Masterclass & Competition for Orchestral Conducting, where the musicians of the MÁV Budapest Symphony Orchestra acted as the jury and elected him as the winner.

Michael Engelbrecht is currently chief conductor of the Symphonic Wind Orchestra ' Crescendo' Krimpen aan de Lek, Spotlight Orchestra Dordrecht and artistic director of the Dutch Wind Symphony, which he founded himself. As a guest conductor, he has appeared with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Theater Košice (Slovakia), the State Opera Stara Zagora (Bulgaria), the MÁV Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Philips Symphonic Wind Orchestra, the Eindhoven Symphony Orchestra, and the Dutch National Student Orchestra during their tour in Croatia. With the Philips Symphonic Wind Orchestra, he conducted concerts in China, including Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai.

Michael studied tenor tuba and conducting at the conservatories of Tilburg and Maastricht, and attended several international masterclasses.
He began his professional music career at the age of 17 as a tenor tuba player with the Royal Dutch Military Band in The Hague. He won first prize at the Concours Mondial de Tuba et Euphonium in Guebwiller (France).

As an instrumentalist, he performed with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ballet Orchestra Amsterdam, The Hague Philharmonic (Residentie Orkest), and the Aachen Symphony Orchestra. He collaborated with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Ingo Metzmacher, Marc Albrecht, and Sir George Benjamin. He also appeared as a soloist with orchestras and as a chamber musician. For several years now, Michael Engelbrecht has devoted himself entirely to his conducting career.