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 Staatsoper (2013-20). He has appeared as a guest conductor at the Vienna Staatsoper, 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. Moreover he has conducted many major international symphony orchestras — in Vienna, Munich, Dresden, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Rome, Chicago, Cleveland, and Israel. With the Berliner Philharmoniker, Petrenko focuses intensively on the core Classical-Romantic repertoire as well as on unjustly neglected works and contemporary music. In the 2023-24 season, he performed Schoenberg’s Jacob’s Ladder, Bartók’s The Wooden Prince, and works by Szymanowski and Dutilleux. In the coming season he will conduct symphonies by Bruckner and Brahms, Mahler and Rachmaninoff as well as contemporary works by Rihm, Srnka, and Gubaidulina. Through his concerts with 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: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is on the bill for 2025. 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 2024, they will undertake a tour to the USA. In addition to works by John Adams and Gustav Mahler, he has recorded symphonies by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich.

Lucerne Festival debut on 7 September 2016 in a Wagner-Strauss program with the Bavarian Staatsorchester.

July 2024