Santtu-Matias Rouvali

conductor

“Rouvali draws exquisite colouring, and the quieter moments—the ghostly dying fall at the end of the movement, the minor-key contrast of the old-world minuet with its wraith-like flute stand out first among many—all have the right magic” (BBC Music Magazine, October 2023).

The 2025–26 season continues Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s tenures as Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra and Honorary Conductor of Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, close to his home in Finland.

Deepening his strong relationship with the New York Philharmonic, summer 2025 marked Rouvali’s second appearance at Bravo! Vail Festival with the orchestra and soloists Miah Persson and Yulianna Avdeeva-Neudauer. The summer also saw Rouvali conduct the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall and the Philharmonia Orchestra in its continued residency in Mikkeli, Finland, as well as performances in Hamburg, Bucharest, Rimini, and Merano.

Throughout this and previous seasons, he continues his relationships with top-level orchestras and soloists across Europe, including the Munich Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and he returns to North America for concerts with New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. This season, he also appears with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Oslo Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Rouvali works with many international soloists, including Bruce Liu, Lisa Batiashvili, Seong-Jin Cho, Nicola Benedetti, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Nemanja Radulović, Stephen Hough, Augustin Hadelich, Nikolai Lugansky, Christian Tetzlaff, Gil Shaham, Baiba Skride, and Ava Bahari.
Continuing their strong touring tradition, Rouvali and Philharmonia Orchestra are currently touring the United States and will be joined by Clara-Yumi Kang for a tour of Korea in December. In January, they embark on an extensive tour of Europe with concerts in cities including Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich, and Vienna.

The 2024–25 season was Rouvali’s final as a Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony, following a successful eight-year tenure. It was marked by a tour to Germany and the Czech Republic, followed by a celebration concert in Gothenburg. He completed his Sibelius Cycle recording with Alpha Classics, the previous releases of which have been highly acclaimed, with awards including Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice award, the Choc de Classica, a prize from the German Record Critics, the prestigious French Diapason d’Or “Découverte,” and Radio Classique’s “TROPHÉE.”

Philharmonia Records’ first release—the double CD album Santtu conducts Strauss—was released in March 2023 following recent releases of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. Mahler 2, the second album from Philharmonia Records, was released in September 2023. Santtu conducts Stravinsky, released in March 2024, was the third album from Philharmonia Records and features the composer’s Firebird Suite and Petrushka. Another prominent CD—Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Benjamin Grosvenor, Nicola Benedetti, and Sheku Kanneh-Mason—was released on Decca in May 2024.