Tolga Kashif

For more than seven decades the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has occupied a central position in British musical life. Its schedule extends across the country, reaching communities with limited prior exposure to orchestral performance while maintaining a regular presence at London's Cadogan Hall, a breadth that underpins its designation as Britain's national orchestra. The ensemble encompasses the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, oriented toward popular repertoire, the experimental Sharp Edge ensemble, and RPO Resound, its dedicated community and education initiative.

Such wide-ranging contemporary activity, encompassing collaborations with pop artists and contributions to film, television, and video-game scores, would have met with approval from founder and inaugural conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. He established the orchestra in 1946 and guided a significant resurgence in British orchestral activity following World War II. The group quickly flourished, initiating an extended summer residency at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1948 and undertaking a United States tour in 1950, the first by an English orchestra since 1912. Rudolf Kempe assumed the role of principal conductor after Beecham's death in 1961. Early in the 1960s the orchestra encountered difficulties during a period of leadership tied to Beecham's widow; Kempe left and later returned, while the ensemble temporarily forfeited permission to use the word "royal." Queen Elizabeth II restored that designation in 1966. Subsequent artistic development came under Antal Doráti (1975-1978), André Previn (1985-1992), and Vladimir Ashkenazy (music director, 1987-1994). Later music directors have included Daniele Gatti, Yuri Temirkanov, Charles Dutoit, and Vasily Petrenko, who took up the post in 2021.

The orchestra distinguishes itself through an unusually extensive and varied recording catalogue. Within its first years the ensemble had already produced more than one hundred releases; by the early 2020s the total had reached several hundred, spanning pop projects—including the Hooked on Classics series of the 1980s—and new avant-garde works. One undertaking comprised a 125-album agreement with the Tring label. RPO Records, founded in 1986, is regarded as the first record company owned by a symphony orchestra, an organizational model that later became widespread. The following year the orchestra introduced its light-music counterpart, the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.

RPO Resound began operations in 1993, delivering musical activities in non-traditional venues such as schools, prisons, and hospitals. A prominent component of the program is the stroke-recovery initiative STROKESTRA. Since 2004 the orchestra has served as resident ensemble at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, becoming the first London orchestra to secure a permanent base. In 2019 it issued Animal Requiem by Rachel Fuller, collaborator and spouse of rocker Pete Townshend, and was named associate orchestra of the Royal Albert Hall. Its 2022 releases included a pairing of two Sibelius symphonies and the album Air, devoted to music by Oliver Davis. The next year the orchestra joined Joe Hisaishi for A Symphonic Celebration, presenting new orchestral arrangements of music from well-known Studio Ghibli animated features.