©Photo: Mark McNulty

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

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“Playing of exemplary clarity of detail… the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is on a roll.”
(The Independent)

The award-winning Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is the UK’s oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra. The origins of the Orchestra’s concert series date back to the formation of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic by a group of Liverpool music lovers in 1840.

Domingo Hindoyan was appointed Chief Conductor of the Orchestra in 2021, joining a distinguished line of musicians who have led the Orchestra during its illustrious history, including Vasily Petrenko, Max Bruch, Sir Charles Hallé, Sir Henry Wood, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir John Pritchard, Sir Charles Groves, Walter Weller, David Atherton, Marek Janowski, Libor Pešek KBE, Petr Altrichter and Gerard Schwarz. In 2018 Andrew Manze was appointed Principal Guest Conductor, and in 2021 Vasily Petrenko became Conductor Laureate.

The Orchestra gives over seventy concerts each season in its home, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, as well as concerts in venues across the city. In recent seasons the Orchestra has given world premiere performances of major works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sir John Tavener, Karl Jenkins, Stewart Copeland, Michael Nyman, Michael Torke, Nico Muhly, James Horner and Sir James MacMillan alongside works by Liverpool-born and North West-based composers including Mark Simpson, Emily Howard and Kenneth Hesketh.

Collaborations with international artists from rock, pop, folk and dance music include Liverpool’s own Sir Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Ian Broudie and the Lightning Seeds, Echo and The Bunnymen, Cast, The Unthanks and Liverpool superclub, Cream.

On Demand: Domingo Hindoyan conducts Beethoven's Ode to Joy © Liverpool Philharmonic

“The Liverpool orchestra give a magnificent performance of Thomas Adès’s Violin Concerto, moving dramatically from the bright, penetrating sonorities of the opening movement to the sinister, almost brutal environment of the much longer central movement.”

(Duncan Druce, Gramophone)

“This is Petrenko’s best recording to date. Without stretching the tempo, indulging in sentiment or clogging the textures, he captures the full romantic flavour of this glorious symphony. The melodies sing. Petrenko adds ever-so-subtle portamento, completely within the style of the music, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic again proves itself the best interpreter of Russian music outside Russia.”

(Financial Times)

“… They have never seemed more sumptuous than in the long melodies of the central adagio, and their brilliant articulation of virtuoso allegro passages at Petrenko’s fast tempi brings exhilarating dividends. In this magnificently played account, the stature of the music of the music is never in doubt.”

(The Times)

“In the Third Symphony, which finds Rachmaninov wistfully recalling the Russia he left after the October Revolution, Petrenko and the RLPO also identify the zest, the orchestral lucidity and the rhythmic thrust that marked the composer’s later years. An exhilarating performance. The Caprice bohémien and the Vocalise, at opposite poles in expressive intent, are handled with equal, compelling adroitness.”

(The Telegraph)

“…The RLPO’s sense of attack carries all before it and the eerie Adagio is traversed with subtlety and finesse. This symphony might not be top-drawer music but by treating it seriously, rather than as the soundtrack for a Bolshevik newsreel, Petrenko and the RLPO do Shostakovich a big favour.”

(Financial Times)

“Petrenko’s thrilling performance plays…there is expressive depth in the adagio…The RLPO woodwinds excel themselves in these gripping readings.”

(The Sunday Times)