Spain and Portugal
Vasily Petrenko is Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a role he began in 2021, and Conductor Laureate of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra after a celebrated fifteen-year tenure as Chief Conductor (2006–2021). He is Associate Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and has served as Chief Conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra (2015–2024), Oslo Philharmonic (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 leading orchestras and is equally at home in opera, with over thirty operas in his repertoire. He has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, Grafenegg Festival, and the BBC Proms.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season include tours with the Royal Philharmonic in Spain and the United States. He makes his debut with the Warsaw Philharmonic, and returns to conduct the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Dresden Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony, among others.
His discography is widely acclaimed, including Shostakovich, Rachmaninov, and Elgar cycles with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and releases of Scriabin, Strauss, Prokofiev, and Myaskovsky with the Oslo Philharmonic.
Petrenko was Gramophone Artist of the Year (2017), Classical BRIT Male Artist of the Year (2010), and holds honorary degrees from Liverpool’s three universities. In 2024, he co-founded a young conductors’ academy in Armenia.
