Vasily Petrenko

Vasily Petrenko is Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Laureate of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, following his hugely acclaimed fifteen-year tenure as their Chief Conductor from 2006–2021. He is also Chief Conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra and Associate Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León. He served as 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 2021, after serving as their Principal Guest Conductor from 2016 and Artistic Director from 2020.

Born in 1976, Vasily Petrenko started his music education at the St Petersburg Capella Boys Music School – Russia’s oldest music school. He then studied at the St Petersburg Conservatoire where he participated in masterclasses with Ilya Musin, Mariss Jansons and Yuri Temirkanov. 

He has worked with many prestigious orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), St Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Czech Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Sydney Symphony Orchestras, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Montreal 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, 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.