Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra

The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the leading Dutch orchestras, has been the musical heart of Rotterdam for more than eighty years. It was founded in 1918 as the Rotterdam Philharmonic Society. In 1930, the society became the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra which developed under chief-conductor Eduard Flipse into one of the most prominent orchestras of the Netherlands. Flipse stayed at the helm of the orchestra until 1962, when he handed over the baton to Franz-Paul Decker. With Jean Fournet and Edo de Waart the orchestra entered a new era. It was together with De Waart, who was appointed chief-conductor in 1973, that the orchestra gained international recognition in numerous recordings and successful tours. After De Waart, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra had David Zinman, James Conlon and Jeffrey Tate as their chief conductor. Since 1995 the celebrated Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, who made his debut with the orchestra in 1988, is the chief of the orchestra. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, whose repertoire ranges from Gabrieli to Gubaidulina and from big band to Broadway, has worked with numerous famous conductors like Karl Böhm, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Kyrill Kondrashin, Rafael Kubelik, Eugene Ormandy, Sir Simon Rattle, and Micheal Tilson Thomas. The orchestra has performed in all major musical centres in Europe and has made several tours to the United States and the Far East. In the forthcoming season concerts with Gergiev are scheduled in Athens, Brussels and St. Petersburg, the home-town of Valery Gergiev’s White Nights Festival. Furthermore there are plans for tours to Spain and to the United States. Especially notable is the orchestra’s opera tradition. They gave the world première of Alfred Schnittke’s Life with an Idiot, and participated in acclaimed productions of Pelléas et Mélisande, Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde with Sir Simon Rattle. Their concert performance of Wagners Parsifal under Rattle, as part of the September 2000 BBC Proms, was a hailed a triumph. One of the ambitions of the orchestra is to find new, other audiences. Therefore special concerts for children are given, the boundaries between classical, world and light music are explored in festive prom-concerts, and the world of classical music is introduced in educational concerts. Besides some ninety subscription concerts, the Orchestra’s programme in the forthcoming season lists four festivals. The seventh edition of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival celebrates Gergiev’s fiftieth birthday, the Rotterdam Music Festival features four centuries of music composed in Rotterdam, the Chaplin Film Festival brings eight Chaplin classics with live musical accompaniment, and the Beethoven Festival recreates concerts that the composer himself organised in 1808. More information about the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra can be found on www.rpho.nl.