Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra received its regal designation in 1957 and stages its concert programs through the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, the organization that presented its inaugural event on March 12, 1840. Today it stands as the United Kingdom’s oldest continuously operating professional symphony orchestra.

Vasily Petrenko took up the post of principal conductor in September 2006 and advanced to chief conductor in September 2009. He follows a distinguished roster of earlier leaders that includes Max Bruch, Sir Charles Hallé, Sir Henry Wood, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir John Pritchard, and Sir Charles Groves. Each season the ensemble presents more than sixty concerts; recent programs have featured world premieres of major scores by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sir John Tavener, James Horner, and Sir James MacMillan, together with new works by composers born in Liverpool or resident in North West England. Uniquely among British orchestral societies, the RLPS owns its performance venue, the 1939 art deco hall designed by Herbert J. Rowse. Its collaborations with international rock and pop artists have included Liverpool native Sir Paul McCartney, for whom it premiered the Liverpool Oratorio, as well as Elvis Costello, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and Echo & the Bunnymen.

During the 2010s the orchestra added further acclaimed releases to its discography, among them Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony and Pastoral Symphony under Andrew Manze; Manze’s Vaughan Williams cycle became the second such project to earn widespread praise, following an earlier set recorded by Vernon Handley in the mid-1980s. Recordings led by Petrenko encompass Rachmaninov’s complete piano concertos and three symphonies as well as the full symphonic cycles of Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Elgar. The account of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 was named Orchestral Recording of the Year at the Gramophone Awards in 2011, while Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies 1, 2, and 5 received both Orchestral Recording of the Year and Recording of the Year honors at the BBC Music Magazine Awards in 2017. The orchestra maintained an especially active recording schedule late in the decade, issuing nine albums during 2019 alone. Its catalog has appeared chiefly on Onyx Classics and Naxos, though it has also been issued by Warner Classics, Toccata Classics, and Champs Hill Records. By 2020 more than one hundred albums had been released; that year the ensemble issued new recordings of music by Elgar, Edward Cowie, and Stravinsky.