The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
is Britain’s oldest surviving professional symphony orchestra, dating from 1840. Vasily Petrenko was appointed Principal Conductor of the orchestra in September 2006 and in September 2009 became Chief Conductor until 2015. The orchestra gives over sixty concerts each season in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and in recent seasons world première performances have included major works by Sir John Tavener, Karl Jenkins, Michael Nyman and Jennifer Higdon, alongside works by Liverpool-born composers John McCabe, Emily Howard, Mark Simpson and Kenneth Hesketh. The orchestra also tours widely throughout the United Kingdom and has given concerts in the United States, the Far East and throughout Europe. Recent additions to the orchestra’s extensive discography include Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony (2009 Classic FM/Gramophone Orchestral Recording of the Year), the world première performance of Sir John Tavener’s Requiem, the first discs of an ongoing Shostakovich cycle and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances and Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3. The orchestra and its new music group, Ensemble 10/10, were jointly awarded Ensemble of the Year in the 2009 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, the most prestigious accolade for live classical music-making in the United Kingdom. Ensemble 10/10 also won the Concert Series of the Year category.

David Lloyd-Jones
began his career in 1959 on the music staff of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, followed by conducting engagements for orchestral and choral concerts, opera, broadcasts and television studio opera productions. He has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and the Wexford, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and Leeds Festivals, and with the major British orchestras. In 1972 he was appointed Assistant Music Director at English National Opera, and there conducted an extensive repertory. In 1978 he founded a new opera company, Opera North, with its orchestra, the English Northern Philharmonia, of which he became Artistic Director and Principal Conductor. During twelve seasons with the company he conducted fifty different new productions, with numerous orchestral concerts, and festival appearances in France and Germany. He has made many successful recordings, and has an extensive career in the concert-hall and opera- house that takes him to leading musical centres throughout the world. His highly acclaimed cycle of Bax’s symphonies and tone poems for Naxos (Gramophone Award) was completed in the autumn of 2003. In 2007 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society.