John Storgårds

Principal Guest Conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, John Storgårds has a dual career as a conductor and violin virtuoso and is widely recognized for his creative flair for programming. As Artistic Director of the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, a title he has held for over 25 years, Storgårds earned global critical acclaim for the ensemble’s adventurous performances and award-winning recordings. 

Internationally, Storgårds appears with such orchestras as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Vienna Radio Symphony, and the London Philharmonic, as well as all of the major Scandinavian orchestras, including the Helsinki Philharmonic where he was Chief Conductor from 2008 to 2015. In North America, he is a regular guest with the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras, the orchestras of Toronto, Montreal, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Dallas, and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., as well as with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. 

Storgårds’s award-winning discography includes not only recordings of works by Schumann, Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn, but also rarities by Holmboe and Vask, which feature him as violin soloist. Cycles of the complete symphonies of Sibelius (2014) and Nielsen (2015) with the BBC Philharmonic were released to critical acclaim by Chandos. His most recent recordings are a highly acclaimed recording on BIS of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 with the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, completed and arranged for chamber orchestra by Michelle Castelletti, and Shostakovich’s monumental Symphony No. 11 “The Year 1905” with the BBC Philharmonic as part of an ongoing Shostakovich symphony cycle being recorded for Chandos. Additional recordings include discs of works by Nørgård, Korngold, Aho, and Rautavaara, the latter receiving a GRAMMY nomination and a Gramophone Award in 2012.