Chief Conductor, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko was appointed Principal Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2006; In September 2009 he became Chief Conductor and has committed to stay with the orchestra until 2015. He was appointed Principal Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in the same year.
Born in 1976, Vasily Petrenko is recognised as one of the exceptional musicians of his generation. He started his music education at the St Petersburg Capella Boys Music School – the oldest music school in Russia. He then studied at the St Petersburg Conservatoire and has also participated in masterclasses with such major figures as Ilya Musin, Mariss Jansons, Yuri Temirkanov and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Between 1994 and 1997, he was Resident Conductor at the St Petersburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre in the Mussorgsky Memorial Theatre.
Following competition success – including the Fourth Prokofiev Conducting Competition in St Petersburg (2003), First Prize in the Shostakovich Choral Conducting Competition in St Petersburg (1997) and First Prize in the Sixth Cadaqués International Conducting Competition in Spain (2002) – he was appointed Chief Conductor of the State Academy Orchestra of St Petersburg from 2004 to 2007. During recent seasons Petrenko has conducted many key orchestras in Russia including the St Petersburg Philharmonic and the Moscow Philharmonic.
Petrenko is equally at home in symphonic and operatic repertoire. In recent seasons, he has made his debuts with the London Symphony, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Budapest Festival Orchestras, made his BBC Proms debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and toured with the European Union Youth Orchestra.
Highlights of the 2009/10 season and beyond include his debuts with the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Finnish Radio Symphony, NHK Symphony Tokyo and Accademia di Santa Cecilia. In the USA, he makes his debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony and San Francisco Symphony in 2010, and the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and National Symphony Orchestra Washington in 2011.
With over 30 operas in his repertoire, he has conducted three productions in recent seasons at the Netherlands Reisopera (Puccini’s Le Villi and Messa da Gloria, I due Foscari and Boris Godunov) and in 2004 he made his debut at the Hamburg State Opera conducting Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame. 2010 included his debuts at Glyndebourne Festival Opera (Macbeth), and the Opera de Paris (Eugene Onegin).
Recordings with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra include a double bill of Fleishman’s Rothschild’s Violin and Shostakovich’s The Gamblers, a disc of suites from Tchaikovsky’s ballets and Liszt’s Piano Concertos. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony was the 2009 Classic FM/Gramophone Orchestral Recording of the Year. and three CDs in a Shostakovich symphony project (No.11, Nos.5 & 9,No. 8). Most recently released are two Rachmaninov discs, one of his orchestral music and one of the 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos , on Avie Records.
Vasily Petrenko is Classical BRIT Awards Male Artist of the Year 2010 and was the Classic FM/Gramophone Young Artist of the Year 2007. In 2009, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates by both the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University and the Lord Mayor of Liverpool awarded him the status of ‘Honorary Scouser’. He was named Personality of the Year at the 2008 Liverpool Scouseology Awards, in association with BBC Radio Merseyside.
A football aficionado, Vasily is a supporter of Zenit St. Petersburg and takes a keen interest in Merseyside’s three clubs, Liverpool, Everton and Tranmere Rovers.
