Santtu-Matias Rouvali

Conductor

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2025-26 Santtu-Matias Rouvali Biography.docx English

“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

Principal Conductor: Philharmonia Orchestra
Chief Conductor: Gothenburg Symphony
Honorary Conductor: Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra

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

Deepening his strong relationship with 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 Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall, and Philharmonia Orchestra in their continued residency in Mikkeli, Finland, as well as performances in Hamburg, Bucharest, Rimini and Merano.

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

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 tour the United States in October 2025 and are joined by Clara-Yumi Kang for a tour of Korea in December 2025. In January 2026, they embark on an extensive tour of Europe with concerts in cities including Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna.

2024/25 served as Rouvali’s final season as Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony, following a successful eight-year tenure. It was marked by a tour to Germany and Czechia, 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 Editor’s Choice award, Les Chocs 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, a 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 featuring The 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.