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 to 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 2021 having been their Principal Guest Conductor from 2016 and Artistic Director from 2020.
Vasily 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 2023/24 season included a debut appearance with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in Hamburg and returns to Hong Kong, Seoul, Israel and Dresden Philharmonic, the Dallas and Pittsburgh Symphonies and the Filarmonica della Scala in Milan and Dresden Symphony Orchestra. Highlights of the 2024/25 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.