Santtu-Matias Rouvali

Santtu-Matias Rouvali was born in 1985 in Lahti, Finland, into a family of musicians; both parents played in the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. He began his musical career as a percussionist and appeared with various Finnish orchestras before deciding, at the age of 22, to study conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where his teachers included Jorma Panula, Leif Segerstam, and Hannu Lintu. He made his debut in 2009 with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra by filling in at the last minute. In the following year he conducted the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time and, from 2013 to 2023, served as Chief Conductor; he remains associated with that ensemble as Honorary Conductor. Rouvali was Chief Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2025 and has held the same post with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London since 2021. He also maintains a close relationship with the New York Philharmonic, with which he appeared at the Bravo! Vail Festival in 2025; other American partners include the Cleveland Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. In Europe Rouvali has guest conducted the Berlin and Munich Philharmonic Orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; he made his debut with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in May 2026. During the 2025-26 season he toured with the Philharmonia Orchestra across Asia, the United States, and Europe, with stops in Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich, and Vienna. Rouvali has attracted particular attention for his complete Sibelius symphony cycle with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (on Alpha Classics); among the distinctions it has won are the German Record Critics’ Prize and the Diapason d’or. In April 2026 he released a recording of Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite and Violin Concerto.

March 2026