Charles Dutoit | Conductor
Charles Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland and studied in Geneva, Siena, Venice and Boston. He was recently appointed artistic director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as well as chief conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Renowned for his polished, idiomatic and eclectic interpretations, Charles Dutoit has been invited since his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980 to conduct other major orchestras of the United States, including those of Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. He has also performed regularly with all the great orchestras of Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, as well as with all the London orchestras and the major orchestras of Japan, South America and Australia.
He has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS and Erato and other labels. His more than 170 recordings, half of them with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, have garnered over 40 awards and distinctions around the world.
For 25 years (1977 to 2002) Charles Dutoit was artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, a dynamic musical partnership recognised the world over. From 1991 to 2001, Charles Dutoit was music director of the Orchestre National de France, with which he made a number of critically acclaimed recordings, and toured extensively on the five continents. In 1998, he was appointed music director of the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo), with which he has toured Europe, the United States, China and Southeast Asia, and is now Music Director Emeritus of the Orchestra.
When still in his early twenties, Charles Dutoit was invited by Karajan to lead the Vienna State Opera. He has since conducted regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. He also led a highly acclaimed new production of Berlioz’s masterpiece Les Troyens at the Los Angeles Music Center Opera. In 2003, he began a series of Wagner operas – Der fliegende Holländer and the complete Ring cycle – at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
Artistic director for three seasons of the Sapporo Pacific Music Festival, Charles Dutoit is currently artistic director of the Miyazaki International Music Festival in Japan and the Canton International Summer Music Academy (CISMA) in Guangzhou (Canton), China, which he founded in 2005.
In July 2009, he took over as music director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra in his native Switzerland.
In 1991, Charles Dutoit was made an honorary citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1995, the government of Quebec named him Grand Officier de l’Ordre national du Québec and in 1996, he was invested as Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He has received two awards from the Canadian Conference of the Arts and in 1998, he was invested as Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award of merit, whose other honorary recipients include J.K. Galbraith, James Hillier, Nelson Mandela, the Queen Mother, Vaclav Havel and Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art and architecture, Charles Dutoit has travelled in all 196 nations of the world. He maintains residences in Switzerland, Paris, Montreal, Buenos Aires and Tokyo.
Acknowledged as one of the UK’s most prodigious orchestras, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) enjoys an international reputation for bringing audiences worldwide first-class performances and the highest possible standards of music-making across a diverse range of musical repertoire. This was the vision of the orchestra’s flamboyant founder Sir Thomas Beecham, whose legacy is maintained today as the orchestra thrives under the exceptional direction of its new artistic director and principal conductor, Charles Dutoit.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is based in London and performs a prestigious series of concerts each year at South Bank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, featuring artists of the highest calibre. Its home is at Cadogan Hall, just off Sloane Square, where concert-goers enjoy an intimate atmosphere in an idyllic location. Complementing the concert series at Cadogan Hall, the orchestra regularly performs in the magnificent Royal Albert Hall, presenting works of great magnitude designed to suit the immensity of this historic and grand venue.
As an international orchestra, the RPO has toured more than 30 countries in the last five years. Recent tours have included performances in Egypt, Russia, Spain, Italy, Germany, the USA, China and the Far East.
Frequently found in the recording studio, the orchestra records extensively for film and television as well as for all the major commercial record companies. The RPO also owns its own record label and is proud to be the first UK orchestra to stream its entire series of concerts live from Cadogan Hall.
For upcoming concert dates, see links below:
www.rpo.co.uk