The Full Score
Vasily Petrenko heads for the RPO; Victoria Wood legacy gives the Hallé a boost; New Generation names
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has announced Vasily Petrenko as its new music director. The Russian conductor will begin his initial five-year contract in August 2021, coinciding with the RPO’S 75th-anniversary season. He takes over from Charles Dutoit, who le the Londonbased ensemble earlier this year following accusations of sexual assault.
Petrenko, 42, will leave the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, where he has enjoyed huge success, first as principal conductor and then chief conductor. An unknown when he was appointed in 2006, he has won numerous awards with the RLPO – not least the
2017 BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year for their disc of Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos 1, 2 & 5 – and become very popular on Merseyside, with Liverpool City Council appointing him ‘Honorary Scouser’ for his contribution to local culture. On taking up his new post at the RPO, he will become conductor laureate of the RLPO, who he says ‘will always have a special place in my heart’. He is also chief conductor of the Oslo Phil.
As for his new job, Petrenko, who studied at St Petersburg Conservatoire, says he welcomes the ‘enormous potential’ of the Royal Philharmonic, and hopes to realise a ‘new chapter for an orchestra with a glorious past and high ambitions for the future’. His arrival will not be the first time they have met: in 2016, he conducted Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 at the
Royal Albert Hall, where Adam Wright, chairman and sub-principal trumpet of the orchestra, says he recognised a ‘unique musical synergy between Vasily and the RPO’S musicians’. Petrenko returned the following year to conduct the orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall.
Petrenko will be the tenth chief conductor or music director of the RPO, founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1946. Arguably London’s most commercially savvy orchestra, it has always prided itself on combining core classical performances with ventures such as spectaculars at the Royal Albert Hall and recordings like the ultra-popular 1980s series Hooked on Classics. Since 2004, Cadogan Hall has served as its home. See Opinion, p23