Santtu-Matias Rouvali

Santtu-Matias Rouvali took up the baton as Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in September 2021. He is just the sixth person to hold that title since the Philharmonia was founded in 1945. 

Santtu performs with the Philharmonia in all their residency venues – at the Southbank Centre in London, and in Bedford, Leicester, Canterbury and Basingstoke – at the BBC Proms, and Edinburgh International Festival. Annual visits to the Mikkeli Festival in Finland have fast become a highlight of the Philharmonia players’ calendars. 

In October 2025, as the Philharmonia turns 80, Santtu conducts on a major tour to the US, culminating at Carnegie Hall. He has also conducted the Orchestra on tours to Finland, Estonia, Germany, Austria, Spain and Japan. In the Philharmonia’s 2025/26 London season, he collaborates with soloists including Víkingur Ólafsson, Hilary Hahn and Lisa Batiashvili, and conducts music from Beethoven to Bernstein. In the season finale, he recreates an epic all-Strauss concert originally conducted in 1947 by Richard Strauss himself.  

In autumn 2024 Santtu led the Philharmonia’s series Nordic Soundscapes, conducting music by Sibelius, Grieg, Nielsen, María Sigfúsdóttir, Miho Hazama and Mats Larsson Gothe.In the Philharmonia’s 2023 series Let Freedom Ring: Celebrating the Sounds of America, he conducted music by George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis, and had the audience dancing in the aisles when he played drum kit in the first ever performance of the Philharmonia Big Band. Originally a percussionist, he played with the Philharmonia’s percussion section in Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood in a streamed performance during the Covid pandemic. 

Santtu’s live recordings on the Philharmonia Records label feature Strauss tone poems, Shostakovich’s sixth, ninth and tenth symphonies, Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony and two Stravinsky ballets.  

From 2017 – 2025 Santtu was Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony, with whom he is recording an award-winning Sibelius cycle. He is Honorary Conductor of Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, and also performs regularly with many top orchestras around Europe and the US including Berliner Philharmoniker and Concertgebouw, as well as New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

When he’s not conducting, Santtu loves to spend time meditating, foraging and hunting in the forest around his home in Finland, and cooking the food he brings home.