About us
The Philharmonia Orchestra creates thrilling performances for a global audience.
The Philharmonia was founded in 1945 by EMI producer Walter Legge, originally as a recording orchestra for the growing home audio market. We have worked with a who’s who of 20th- and 21st-century music. Herbert von Karajan, Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini and Riccardo Muti are just a few of the great artists to be associated with the Orchestra, and we have premiered works by Richard Strauss, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Errollyn Wallen, Kaija Saariaho and many others. We have always pioneered the use of technology to reach broader audiences for orchestral music. During the Coronavirus pandemic, we continued to create outstanding performances designed to experience online. We played for lifelong fans and first-time listeners in Brazil, Sudan, Indonesia, India, and high above the Arctic Circle in Norway.
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, in the heart of London, has been our home since 1995. We also have residencies at venues and festivals across England: Bedford Corn Exchange, De Montfort Hall in Leicester, The Marlowe in Canterbury, Anvil Arts in Basingstoke, the Three Choirs Festival in the West of England, and Garsington Opera. Central to all our residencies is a Learning & Engagement programme that empowers people to engage with, and participate in, orchestral music.
The Philharmonia is a registered charity. We rely on income from a wide range of sources to deliver our programme. We are proud to be supported by Arts Council England, and grateful for the generosity of the many individuals who make up our supporter family, as well as the Trusts and Foundations who underpin our work. During the Coronavirus pandemic, we received grants from the Cultural Recovery Fund, along with support from individual donors, corporate sponsors, and audience members. This enabled us to support our players, and to create new online experiences for both audiences and Learning & Engagement project participants. In the US, the Orchestra’s American Patrons generously support the Philharmonia Foundation, a US-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation.
Principal artists
Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali is the Philharmonia’s Principal Conductor. He took over the baton from Esa-Pekka Salonen, and is only the sixth person to hold that title in the Orchestra’s history. Previously Principal Guest Conductor for four years, Santtu is known for his expressive, balletic conducting and irrepressible energy. Santtu launched his tenure as Principal Conductor in 2021 with Human/Nature: Music for a Precious Planet, a wide-ranging series exploring music inspired by the natural world and the role of the arts in addressing environmental issues.
Vidya Patel is the Philharmonia’s Artist in Residence for the 2024/25 Season. Now in its fourth year, the Artist in Residence initiative has previously featured House of Absolute (2021/22), Love Ssega (2022/23) and Soumik Datta (2023/34).
Violinist Nemanja Radulović is our Featured Artist in the 2024/25 season, performing as a soloist with us across the UK.
Digital programme, recording and broadcasting
The Philharmonia’s international reputation derives in part from our extraordinary 78-year recording legacy, which in the last ten years has been built on by pioneering work with digital technology. The Orchestra’s recordings include benchmark LPs, more than 150 film and videogame soundtracks and streamed performances. Its recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is travelling through interstellar space on board the Voyager spacecraft, and its immersive installations and virtual reality (VR) experiences have introduced many thousands of people to orchestral music.
The Philharmonia Records label was established in 2023. The Orchestra has released live recordings of major works by Strauss, Mahler and Stravinsky, with Santtu at the helm. In 2020 Warner Classics released Philharmonia: Birth of a Legend, a 24-CD set of the orchestra’s early recordings marking its 75th anniversary; and we worked with the BBC and the Otto Klemperer Film Foundation to release a box set of Blu-ray discs of Klemperer’s Beethoven Symphony cycle, filmed live at the Royal Festival Hall in 1970.
The Philharmonia has over 5m listeners each month on Spotify, and a vibrant YouTube channel with over 140,000 subscribers. Our channel features free performances specially created for online viewing; films introducing the instruments of the orchestra; interviews with artists; and in-depth documentaries accompanying landmark series. The Philharmonia is Classic FM’s Partner Orchestra and broadcasts extensively on BBC Radio 3.
The Virtual Orchestra
Global reach
The Orchestra tours extensively throughout Europe and has performed in China, Colombia, Japan, Mauritius and the USA. In the 2024/25 season, Santtu-Matias Rouvali takes the Orchestra to Estonia, Finland, Spain and Japan, and Marin Alsop leads a tour across mainland Spain and the Canary Islands.
People
The Philharmonia’s Emerging Artists Programme nurtures and develops the next generation of instrumentalists and composers, with a focus on increasing diversity within the classical music industry.
The Philharmonia is a team of 80 world-class musicians from 16 countries. We look forward to bringing music into your life, through great concerts and ground-breaking projects, for the next 75 years and beyond.
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