After standing at the helm of the Liverpool Philharmonic for fifteen years, Vasili Petrenko took over as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) in 2021. Founded in 1946, the renowned ensemble is one of the most active symphony orchestras, performing nearly 200 concerts a year and bringing music of the highest quality to more than 60 million people through live broadcasts.
A regular guest of the world’s most famous orchestras, in 2017 the Russian-born conductor was named Artist of the Year at the prestigious Gramophone Classical Music Awards. Petrenko is a versatile musician, who is equally at home in opera and the symphonic repertoire. He has made several critically acclaimed recordings of works by Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, Shostakovich, Elgar and Prokofiev. His 2008 recording with the Liverpool Philharmonic of two piano concertos by Liszt, as well of the Danse Macabre, was praised by reviewers as the acme of Liszt interpretation, and one was convinced that ‘Petrenko is one of the most important conductors of his generations.’ The soloist of the evening, József Balog, is a true Liszt specialist, whose recording of the Transcendental Études won the Grand Prix of the Liszt Ferenc Society in 2016.