Kirill Petrenko

Kirill Petrenko has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Berliner Philharmoniker since August 2019. Born in 1972 in Omsk, Siberia, he moved with his family to Vorarlberg in Austria at the age of 18. His training as a conductor at the Academy of Music in Vienna was followed by an engagement at the Volksoper in that city from 1997 and positions as General Music Director at the Meininger Theater (1999-2002), the Komische Oper Berlin (2002-07), and the Bavarian Staastoper (2013-20). He has appeared as a guest conductor at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Dresden Semperoper, the Royal Opera House in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Opéra national de Paris. From 2013 to 2015, he conducted Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival. With the Berliner Philharmoniker, Petrenko focuses intensively on the core Classical-Romantic repertoire and also concentrates on unjustly neglected works and contemporary music. In the past season, he presented no fewer than three world premieres with the orchestra: works by Miroslav Srnka, Lisa Streich, and Julia Wolfe. As part of the 2023-24 season’s focus on “Music in Transition,” he will perform Schoenberg’s Jacob’s Ladder, Bartók’s The Wooden Prince, Strauss’s Sinfonia domestica, Smetana’s Má vlast, and music by Wagner, Ravel, Szymanowski, and Dutilleux, among others. Through his work conducting concerts by the Karajan Academy and the German Federal Youth Orchestra, Petrenko is committed to the training of young musicians and devotes himself to educational projects. He conducts concerts as well as opera productions at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden: Strauss’s Elektra is on the bill for 2024. Petrenko can be seen regularly on tour with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Salzburg and Lucerne Festivals and in European musical capitals; in the fall of 2023, they will undertake a tour to Asia. In addition to works by John Adams and Gustav Mahler, he has recorded symphonies by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich.

Lucerne Festival debut  on 7 September 2016, when Petrenko conducted the Bavarian Staatsorchester in a Wagner-Strauss program.

July 2023