New music, new appointments, Studio Ghibli & Queen: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's London season opens this week

Emilia Hoving (Photo: Laura Oja)

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's London season opens this week. 

They will be performing Mozart and Mendelsohn at the Windsor Festival tonight with conductor Alexander Shelley, music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Canada (23 September). Then Shelley and the orchestra will be at Cadogan Hall on 25 September with a programme featuring Midori performing Sibelius' Violin Concerto, plus music by Strauss and Joe Hisaishi (the Studio Ghibli composer who is the RPO's Composer in Association). In between these two concerts, Matthew Freeman conducts the orchestra in Symphonic Queen at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 September. Quite a varied line-up!

The orchestra has recently announced three appointments. Sir John Rutter has been appointed as the RPO’s Artist Laureate, recognising his close relationship with the RPO spanning several decades, including composing, arranging, conducting, recording and programming. There will be celebrations on 5 November with an 80th birthday concert at St Paul's Cathedral when Rutter will conduct the premiere of a work composed for the occasion.

Kevin John Edusei (Photo: Marco Borggreve)

Emilia Hoving has been appointed as the RPO’s Associate Conductor for a three-year period starting this season. Having emerged as one of the most exciting young Finnish conductors of today, Hoving’s exceptional talents were demonstrated when she conducted the RPO last season at Cadogan Hall and the Bristol Beacon. This season she conducts the RPO at Cadogan Hall on 30 September when Alexandra Dariescu is the soloist in Croatian composer Dora Pejačević's Phantasie Concertante plus music by Sibelius, Ravel and Stravinsky.

Another young conductor, Kevin John Edusei will be the RPO’s Conductor-in-Residence at Cadogan Hall for the 2025-26 season and he will be on the podium on 16 October with American Gabriella Smith plus Grieg, and Sibelius, 26 February 2026 with Canadian composer Samy Moussa, plus Strauss and Beethoven, and 27 May 2026 with Ligeti, Gershwin, and Bartok.

The season will be going out with a colourful bang as Vasily Petrenko conducts Scriabin's Symphony No.3, ‘The Divine Poem’, Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead and the UK premiere of Joe Hisaishi's The Border (Concerto for Three Horns and Orchestra) at Bristol Beacon (4 June 2026) and the Royal Festival Hall (5 June 2026).

Full details from the RPO website.