Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Principal Conductor
Santtu-Matias Rouvali took up the baton as Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in September 2021. He is just the sixth person to hold that title since the Philharmonia was founded in 1945.
Santtu has conducted a wide range of music with the Philharmonia, from blockbusters by Strauss and Rachmaninov to works by living composers including Magnus Lindberg and Anna Clyne. He has performed with the Philharmonia in all their residency venues – at the Southbank Centre in London, and in Bedford, Leicester, Canterbury and Basingstoke – at the BBC Proms, and Edinburgh International Festival. And annual visits to the Mikkeli Festival in Finland have fast become a highlight of the Philharmonia players’ calendars.
In autumn 2024 Santtu leads the Philharmonia’s series Nordic Soundscapes, conducting music by Sibelius, Grieg, Nielsen, María Sigfúsdóttir, Miho Hazama and Mats Larsson Gothe, and taking part in discussions on environmental issues. In the 2024/25 season, he takes the Orchestra on tour to Finland, Estonia, Spain and Japan.
In the Philharmonia’s 2023 series Let Freedom Ring: Celebrating the Sounds of America, he conducted music by George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis, and had the audience dancing in the aisles when he played drum kit in the first ever performance of the Philharmonia Big Band. Originally a percussionist, he played with the Philharmonia’s percussion section in Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood in a streamed performance during the Covid pandemic.
Santtu conducts Strauss, the first release on the Philharmonia Records label, features his recordings of four Strauss tone poems, two of them recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall in his first concert as Principal Conductor. His second Philharmonia Records release is a live recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’. The third, Santtu conducts Shostakovich, will be released in autumn 2024. He has also released Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 with the Philharmonia on Signum Records.
Santtu is Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony, with whom he is recording an award-winning Sibelius cycle. He is Honorary Conductor of Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, and also performs regularly with top orchestras around Europe and the US.
When he’s not conducting, Santtu loves to spend time meditating, foraging and hunting in the forest around his home in Finland, and cooking the food he brings home.
