About the London Philharmonic Orchestra
One of the finest orchestras on the international stage, the London Philharmonic Orchestra balances a long and distinguished history with its reputation as one of the UK’s most forward-looking ensembles. As well as its concert performances, the Orchestra also records film soundtracks, has a thriving record label, and reaches thousands of people every year through activities for families, schools and local communities.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra was founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1932, and has since been headed by many great conductors including Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. In September 2021, Edward Gardner became the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor, succeeding Vladimir Jurowski, who became Conductor Emeritus in recognition of his transformative impact on the Orchestra as Principal Conductor from 2007–21. Karina Canellakis is the Orchestra’s current Principal Guest Conductor and Tania León Composer-in-Residence.
The Orchestra is resident at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London. It also enjoys flourishing residencies in Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden, and performs regularly around the UK. Each summer the Orchestra takes up its annual residency at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where it has been Resident Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years. The Orchestra also tours internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide, and was in residency at the Concertgebouw in Bruges for the 2023-24 season.
The Grammy-winning London Orchestra has recorded many blockbuster film scores, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Lawrence of Arabia, East is East, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Thor: The Dark World. It also broadcasts regularly on television and radio, and in 2005 established its own record label, which now numbers over 120 releases. It is the world’s most-streamed orchestra, with 15 million plays of its content globally each month, and its innovative digital and social media content led to it being named runner-up in the 2020 Digital Classical Music Awards.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra is committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians: its dynamic and wide-ranging Education and Community program provides first musical experiences for children and families; offers creative projects and professional development opportunities for schools and teachers; inspires talented teenage instrumentalists to progress their skills and develops the next generation of professional musicians. Notable are its respected schemes developing the talent pipeline, with recent additions specifically for young artists from communities under-represented in UK orchestras, and programs for adults and young people with disabilities or special educational needs.
During its last season, the Orchestra continued to offer digital streams of selected live concerts through its partnership with Marquee TV. Principal Conductor Edward Gardner opened the season in September 2023 with Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, and returned for 11 more concerts including Holst’s The Planets and Stravinsky’s Petrushka. April 2024 saw the long-awaited conclusion of Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski’s Wagner Ring Cycle, Götterdämmerung. The centerpiece of the season was the spring 2024 festival The Music in You, which embraced all kinds of expression – dance, music theater and audience participation. As well as performing in various settings across London, the Orchestra collaborated with artists from across the creative spectrum, including jazz pianist and composer Julian Joseph and choreographer Wayne McGregor in a boundary-defying ballet project. Other premieres included exciting new works by Daniel Kidane, Victoria Vita Polevá, Luís Tinoco and John Williams. Rising stars who made their debuts with the Orchestra in 2023-24 included conductors Tianyi Lu, Oksana Lyniv, Jonathon Heyward and Natalia Ponomarchuk, accordionist João Barradas and organist Anna Lapwood, while established artists making welcome returns included Anne-Sophie Mutter, Robin Ticciati, Paavo Järvi, Christian Tetzlaff and Danielle de Niese.
About Edward Gardner, Principal Conductor
Edward Gardner is Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet. During the 2023-24 season, Gardner conducted the London Philharmonic in 10 concerts at the Royal Festival Hall and toured the orchestra in Asia and to major European cities including Paris, Munich, Frankfurt and Hamburg, as well as a mini-residency in Bruges. He opened the LPO season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection.’ Other highlights in London included his curation of “The Music in You,” a cross-arts spring festival which celebrated artistic expression of all kinds. “The Music in You” opened with Haydn’s The Creation and closed with a dance-influenced program featuring a reinvention of Szymanowski's ballet A Body for Harnasie in collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor.
Gardner opened his final 2023-24 season as Chief Music Director of the Bergen Philharmonic with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Season highlights with Bergen Phil included a mini-Rachmaninov festival and their final German tour together. He completed his tenure as Chief Conductor at the closing of the Bergen International Festival, conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 'Symphony of a Thousand.' The orchestra was joined by several choirs, including the Edvard Grieg Kor of which Gardner was the Principal Conductor.
After commencing his role of Artistic Advisor of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in February 2022, Gardner conducted a new production of Verdi’s Un ballo in Maschera alongside concert performances of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust. He conducted a triple bill of Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und–leben, Bartok’s Bluebeard's Castle, and Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy. Future plans with the company include a Ring Cycle commencing in Spring 2026 and culminating in Autumn 2028.
In demand as a guest conductor, recent seasons saw Gardner debut with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Wiener Symphoniker; while returns included engagements with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Montreal Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. He also continued his longstanding collaborations with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, where he was Principal Guest Conductor from 2010-16, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whom he has conducted at both the First and Last Night of the BBC Proms.
As Music Director of English National Opera for eight years (2007-15), Gardner built a strong relationship with New York’s Metropolitan Opera where he has conducted productions of Damnation of Faust, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Der Rosenkavalier and Werther. In London, he recently returned to the Royal Opera House where he made his debut in 2019 in a new production of Káťa Kabanová followed by Werther a season later. During the 2021-22 season, Edward made his debut with Bayerische Staatsoper in a new production of Peter Grimes and returned in the 2022-23 season for a jump-in of Verdi’s Otello. Elsewhere, he has conducted at La Scala, Chicago Lyric Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Opéra National de Paris. In May 2024 Gardner conducted a double bill of Bartok’s Bluebeard's Castle and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine at Teatro di San Carlo.
A passionate supporter of young talent, Gardner founded the Hallé Youth Orchestra in 2002 and regularly conducts the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He has a close relationship with the Juilliard School of Music, and with the Royal Academy of Music who appointed him their inaugural Sir Charles Mackerras Conducting Chair in 2014.
Born in Gloucester in 1974, Gardner was educated at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music. He went on to become Assistant Conductor of The Hallé and Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera. His many accolades include being named Royal Philharmonic Society Award Conductor of the Year (2008), an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera (2009) and receiving an OBE for Services to Music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours (2012).
About Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin
Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s focus is to get to the heart of the music, to its meaning for us - now and here. With a combination of depth, brilliance and humor, Kopatchinskaja brings an inimitable sense of theatrics to her music. Described by The New York Times "a player of rare expressive energy and disarming informality, of whimsy and theatrical ambition," Kopatchinskaja’s distinctive approach always conveys the core of the work, whether it is with an out-of-the-box performance of a traditional violin repertoire classic or with an original staged project she presents as experimental performance dramaturge.
Her absolute priority is music of the 20th and 21st century and the collaboration with living composers such as Luca Francesconi, Michael Hersch, György Kurtág, Márton Illés and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Kopatchinskaja directs staged concerts at venues on both sides of the Atlantic and collaborates with leading orchestras, conductors and festivals worldwide. This season, she channels her creative prowess and versatility into eccentric reinterpretations and innovatively curated projects as part of her residencies at the Southbank Centre in London, the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Philharmonie Essen. Kopatchinskaja is the youngest honorary member of the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft, with this year's most extensive portrait being dedicated to her. Furthermore, she holds the position of Associated Artist of the SWR Experimentalstudio, one of the most important international research centers in the field of electronic music.
As Artist in Residence, Patricia Kopatchinskaja is curating this year's Golden Decade festival at the Dresden Philharmonic. The festival features her performance of major violin works from the Classical Modern era. In a new production at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Kopatchinskaja is collaborating with soprano Anna Prohaska in György Kurtág's music-theater work Kafka-Fragments, directed by Barrie Kosky. The performance explores a spectrum of vocal and instrumental expressions and emotional states in 40 miniatures.
Highlights of the past season included residencies at the London Barbican Centre, Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, as well as Kopatchinskaja's continued role as artistic partner of the Camerata Bern. Last season, Kopatchinskaja once again went beyond boundaries with a daring musical experiment joining forces with Herbert Fritsch to create a Neo-Dada opera production Vergeigt at Theater Basel. Following the international success of her previous collaboration with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra - Bye Bye Beethoven - Patricia Kopatchinskaja returned for the premiere performances of a new concert staging with the ensemble - Les Adieux - a project confronting the rapid deterioration of the environment and the loss of the natural world. Kopatchinskaja’s other projects explore music staged through contemporary contexts, such as Dies Irae, another musical reflection on the the growing environmental crisis. Kopatchinskaja also performs as a vocal artist in Ligeti’s Mystères du macabre or Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire where she takes on the role of Pierrot himself, as well as her project presenting Kurt Schwitters’ poem Ursonate as a film in the style of Dada.
Kopatchinskaja’s discography includes over 30 recordings, among them GRAMMY award-winning Death and the Maiden with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, a project which was also re-created as a semi-staged filmed performance with Camerata Bern, premiered on HarrisonParrott’s digital platform Virtual Circle. Recent CD releases season included Les Plaisirs Illuminés with Sol Gabetta and Camerata Bern, which was saluted with a BBC Music Magazine award and Le monde selon George Antheil with Joonas Ahonen (both on Alpha Classics). A revival of the project Maria Mater Meretrix with Anna Prohaska presenting the image of women throughout the centuries in a musical mosaic was also released on CD last season. Additionally, in 2023, Kopatchinskaja embarked on an extensive tour across Germany with Sol Gabetta, celebrating their album Sol & Pat and their musical connection of over twenty years. This season has also seen the release of the album Take 3 with clarinetist Reto Bieri and pianist Polina Leschenko - a testament to the enduring partnership of these three artists, celebrating their shared musical journey and musical origins.
Kopatchinskaja is a humanitarian ambassador for Terre des Hommes, the leading Swiss child relief agency and was awarded the Swiss Grand Award for Music by the Federal Office of Culture for Switzerland in 2017.