Vasily Petrenko is Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,
a position he took on in 2021, becoming Conductor Laureate of the
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra following his hugely acclaimed
fifteen-year tenure as their Chief Conductor from 2006-2021. He is the
Associate Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and
has also served as Chief Conductor of the European Union Youth
Orchestra (2015-2024), Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic
Orchestra (2013-2020) and Principal Conductor of the National Youth
Orchestra of Great Britain (2009–2013). He stood down as Artistic
Director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny
Svetlanov’ in 2022 having been their Principal Guest Conductor from
2016 and Artistic Director from 2020.
Petrenko has worked with many of the world’s most prestigious
orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio
Symphony, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, London Symphony, London
Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
(Rome), St Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France,
Czech Philharmonic and NHK Symphony Orchestras, and in North
America has lead the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco, Boston and
Chicago Symphony Orchestras. He has appeared at the Edinburgh
Festival, Grafenegg Festival and made frequent appearances at the BBC
Proms. Equally at home in the opera house, and with over thirty operas
in his repertoire, Vasily Petrenko has conducted widely on the operatic
stage, including at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Opéra National de
Paris, Opernhaus Zürich, the Bayerische Staatsoper, and the
Metropolitan Opera, New York.
Recent highlights have included wide-ranging touring with the Royal
Philharmonic, across major European capitals, the US and China. The
23/24 season included a debut appearance with the NDR-Elphilharmonie
in Hamburg and returns to Hong Kong, Seoul, Israel and Dresden
Philharmonics, the Dallas and Pittsburgh Symphonies and the
Filarmonica della Scala in Milan and Dresden Symphony Orchestras.
Highlights of the 24/25 season include his debut with the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra in a new production of Boris Godunov at the
Dutch National Opera, returns to the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande,
the Sydney, Montreal, Singapore, Berlin Radio and Sao Paulo
Symphony Orchestras, and the National Symphony Orchestra of
Washington DC, and touring to Germany and major European summer
festivals with the Royal Philharmonic.
Vasily Petrenko has established a strongly defined profile as a recording
artist. Amongst a wide discography, his Shostakovich, Rachmaninov and
Elgar symphony cycles with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Orchestra have garnered worldwide acclaim. With the Oslo
Philharmonic Orchestra, he has released cycles of Scriabin’s symphonies
and Strauss’ tone poems, and an ongoing series of the symphonies of
Prokofiev and Myaskovsky.
Born in 1976, Petrenko was educated at the St Petersburg Capella Boys
Music School – Russia’s oldest music school – and the St Petersburg
Conservatoire where he participated in masterclasses with such luminary
figures as Ilya Musin, Mariss Jansons and Yuri Temirkanov, and began
his career as Resident Conductor (1994–1997)of St Petersburg’s
Mikhailovsky Theatre. In September 2017, Vasily Petrenko was
honoured with the Artist of the Year award at the prestigious annual
Gramophone Awards, one decade on from receiving their Young Artist
of the Year award in October 2007. In 2010, he won the Male Artist of
the Year at the Classical BRIT Awards and is only the second person to
have been awarded Honorary Doctorates by both the University of
Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University (in 2009), and an Honorary
Fellowship of the Liverpool John Moores University (in 2012), awards
which recognise the immense impact he has had on the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra and the city’s cultural scene. In 2024, Vasily
also launched a new academy for young conductors, co-organized by the
Primavera Foundation Armenia and the Armenian National
Philharmonic Orchestra.