In 2016, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) celebrates 70 years at the forefront of music-making in the UK. Its home base since 2004 at London’s Cadogan Hall serves as a springboard for fourteen residencies across the country, often in areas where access to live orchestral music is very limited. With a wider reach than any other UK large ensemble, the RPO has truly become Britain’s national orchestra. The regional programme, plus regular performances at Cadogan Hall, Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall and a hugely popular series at the Royal Albert Hall, are conducted by a distinguished roster of musicians: Charles Dutoit, appointed Artistic Director and Principal Conductor in 2009 after a decades-long association with the RPO; Pinchas Zukerman, the inspirational Principal Guest Conductor; Alexander Shelley, the dynamic young Principal Associate Conductor since January 2015, and the esteemed Permanent Associate Conductor Grzegorz Nowak. International touring is vital to the Orchestra’s work, taking it to many prestigious destinations worldwide. The 70th Anniversary Season has included concerts at the festivals of Montreux and Granada, an extensive tour of the USA, and visits to central Europe and the Far East, including South Korea. For more than twenty years RPO Resound, the Orchestra’s community and education programme, has taken music into the heart of the regions that the Orchestra serves. From Azerbaijan to Jamaica and from Shanghai to Scunthorpe, the team – comprising the majority of the Orchestra – has worked with young people, the homeless, recovering stroke patients (in the STROKEstra project in Hull) and in settings ranging from the Sea Life London Aquarium to hospitals, orphanages and children’s hospices. In 1986, the RPO became the first UK orchestra to launch its own record label. Continuing its tradition of entrepreneurial innovation, in 2015 the RPO started an online radio station, The Sound of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which broadcasts via its website, and RPO TV, an online video channel streaming fly-on-the-wall shorts written, directed and filmed by the musicians. The Orchestra has become increasingly active on social media platforms, inviting audiences to engage informally on Facebook and Twitter and to enjoy behind-the-scenes insights on the RPO blog, YouTube and Instagram. Although the RPO embraces twenty-first-century opportunities, including appearances with pop stars and on video game, film and television soundtracks, its artistic priority remains paramount: the making of great music at the highest level for the widest possible audience. This would have been lauded by its Founder and first conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, who set up the RPO in 1946, leading a vital revival in the UK’s orchestral life after World War II. Since then, the Orchestra’s principal conductors have included Rudolf Kempe, Antal Doráti, Walter Weller, André Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yuri Temirkanov and Daniele Gatti; and its repertoire has encompassed every strand of music from the core classical repertoire to music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and works by leading composers of recent years, including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir John Tavener. As the 70th Anniversary Season unfolds, the RPO’s versatility and high standards mark it out as one of today’s most open-minded, forward-thinking symphony orchestras. Now it proudly looks forward to the next 70 years.

Pinchas Zukerman has remained a phenomenon in the world of music for over four decades. His musical genius, prodigious technique and unwavering artistic standards are a marvel to audiences and critics. Devoted to the next generation of musicians, he has inspired younger artists with his magnetism and passion. His enthusiasm for teaching has resulted in innovative programmes in London, New York, China, Israel and Ottawa. The name Pinchas Zukerman is equally respected as violinist, violist, conductor, pedagogue and chamber musician. Pinchas Zukerman’s 2016–17 season, his eighth as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and his second as Artist-in-Association with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, includes over 100 concerts worldwide. In January 2017, he serves as Artistic Director of the Winter Festival for three weeks of concerts and educational residency activities with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Guest conducting and soloist engagements include the Cleveland Orchestra and Boston, Pittsburgh and Montreal Symphonies, plus overseas appearances with the Berlin and Israel Philharmonics, Camerata Salzburg, Sydney Symphony, Korean Chamber Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and Miyazaki Festival Orchestra. European recitals with pianist Yefim Bronfman and chamber concerts with the Zukerman Trio round out the season. Over the last decade, Pinchas Zukerman has become as equally regarded a conductor as he is an instrumentalist, leading many of the world’s top ensembles in a wide variety of the orchestral repertoire’s most demanding works. A devoted and innovative pedagogue, Pinchas Zukerman chairs the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, where he has pioneered the use of distance-learning technology in the arts. In Canada, where he served as Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 1999–2015, he established the NAC Institute for Orchestra Studies and the Summer Music Institute encompassing the Young Artists, Conductors and Composers Programs. He currently serves as Conductor Emeritus of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, as well as Artistic Director of its Young Artist Program.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1948, Pinchas Zukerman came to America in 1962 where he studied at The Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian. He has been awarded the Medal of Arts, the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence and was appointed as the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative’s first instrumentalist mentor in the music discipline. Pinchas Zukerman’s extensive discography contains over 100 titles, and has earned him two Grammy Awards and twentyone nominations. His complete recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Philips were released in July 2016, in a twenty-two-disc set spanning Baroque, Classical and Romantic concertos and chamber music. Autumn 2016 sees the Analekta release of Baroque Treasury with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, cellist Amanda Forsyth and oboist Charles Hamann in works by Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Tartini. Other recent releases include Brahms’ Symphony No.4 and Double Concerto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Amanda Forsyth, recorded in live performances at Ottawa’s Southam Hall, and an album of works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Programme

L. van Beethoven:  Egmont Overture, Op. 84

L. van Beethoven:  Symphony No 7 in A major, Op. 92

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L. van Beethoven:  Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 ( soloist: Pinchas Zukerman – violin)

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