Karina Canellakis
Internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command and interpretive depth, Karina Canellakis has become one of the most in-demand conductors of her generation. She is the Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This season, Karina will be the featured Artist-in-Residence at Vienna’s famed Musikverein, conducting four different orchestras; the Wiener Symphoniker, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, London Philharmonic and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. The four programmes present a range of iconic repertoire including Shostakovich’s powerful 8th symphony, Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass and Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. Karina’s 23-24 guest engagements include her debut with the New York Philharmonic as well as return engagements with the Boston Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and NDR Elbphilharmonie. Following last season’s highly successful tour of Germany with the London Philharmonic and Daniil Trifonov, Karina again leads the orchestra to Munich, Athens and Vienna. She presents exciting contemporary pieces and commissions as well as well-known masterpieces at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Particular highlights include a concert performance of Wagner’s Siegfried as part of the prestigious Zaterdag Matinee series. After the great successes of “Kat’a Kabánova” and “The Cunning Little Vixen” with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in previous seasons, she continues her series of Janáček operas with “ The Makropulos Case”. She will also conduct “Der Rosenkavalier” for Santa Fe Opera in the summer of 2024. Her concert performances of acts of Wagner’s “Die Walküre”, “Tristan und Isolde”, and “Siegfried” have been met with tremendous critical praise, and she has
conducted critically acclaimed productions of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”, Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, “Die Zauberflöte”, “Le nozze di Figaro”, David Lang’s “the loser” and Peter Maxwell Davies’ “The Hogboon”. April 2023 saw the start of a multi-album collaboration between Karina, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Pentatone with their debut release; Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra and Four Orchestral Pieces. Karina and the RFO were also featured artists for the launch of Apple Classical in a recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with Alice Sara Ott. Since winning the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award in 2016 Karina has become a guest conductor with leading orchestras around the world, including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Vienna Symphony, Munich Philharmonic and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. She recently finished a four-year appointment as Principal Guest Conductor of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. She was the first woman to conduct the First Night of the BBC Proms in London in 2019, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and returned to the Proms in 2022. She was also the first woman to ever conduct the Nobel Prize Concert with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in 2018. Already known to many in the classical music world for her virtuoso violin playing, Karina was initially encouraged to pursue conducting by Sir Simon Rattle while she was playing regularly in the Berlin Philharmonic for two years as a member of their Orchester-Akademie. She performed for many years as a soloist, guest leader, and chamber musician, spending her summers at the Marlboro Music Festival, until conducting eventually became her focus. Karina was born and raised in New York City.
