Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin

The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin holds an internationally recognised position among the German radio orchestras and Berlin’s top orchestras. Vladimir Jurowski has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since 2017. Acting alongside him since 2019 is Karina Canellakis as Principal Guest Conductor.

The RSB dates back to the first musical radio hour of the German Broadcasting Corporation in October 1923. The previous chief conductors, including Sergiu Celibidache, Eugen Jochum, Hermann Abendroth, Rolf Kleinert, Heinz Rögner, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Marek Janowski, formed an orchestra that has experienced the vicissitudes of German history in the 20th century in a special way.

Today, the RSB has become a top address for outstanding young conductors on the international music scene: Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Vasily Petrenko, Jakub Hrůša, Alain Altinoglu, Omer Meir Wellber, Lahav Shani or Nicholas Carter. Many of them made their Berlin debut with the RSB and now conduct it regularly.

Since 1923, important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries have conducted the RSB or performed their own works as soloists: Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Wladimir Vogel, Kurt Weill and Alexander Zemlinsky, as well as, more recently, Krzysztof Penderecki, Peter Maxwell Davies, Friedrich Goldmann, Berthold Goldschmidt, Siegfried Matthus, Matthias Pintscher, Peter Ruzicka, Heinz Holliger, Jörg Widmann, Thomas Adès and Brett Dean. Brett Dean and Marko Nikodijević were most recently present at the RSB as composer-in-residence, and in 2021/2022 Jelena Firssova will enrich the season with her work.

Thanks to close ties with both Deutschlandradio and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb), all RSB symphony concerts are broadcast on the radio. For more than 50 years, the RSB has made regular guest appearances in Japan and Korea as well as at German and European festivals and in music centres worldwide.

www.rsb-online.de

As of June 2021