Anna Rakitina has firmly established herself as one of the most exciting and sought-after conductors of her generation following a series of highly acclaimed appearances with Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras as well as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Tonkünstler-Orchester, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra.
The 2024-25 season sees Rakitina make debuts with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, and North Carolina Symphony. In May 2025, she will conduct at the first-ever Shostakovich Festival Leipzig, which will bring together the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and young musicians from both the Tanglewood Music Center and the Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy. Throughout the season, she will will also appear with Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Dresdner Philharmonie, Staatskapelle Dresden, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, and Orquestra Sinfónica de Galicia.
In recent seasons, Anna Rakitina has worked with orchestras such as BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Nürnberger Symphoniker, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Orchestre philharmonique du Luxembourg, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestre National de Lille, and Norwegian National Opera Orchestra. In North America, she has appeared with notable orchestras such as the Baltimore, Cincinnati, Houston, Utah, Quebec, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras.
Anna Rakitina regularly collaborates with soloists including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Inon Barnatan, Joshua Bell, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Hadelich, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, Daniel Hope, Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlaff, Jan Vogler, and Alisa Weilerstein. She continues to champion music by today’s composers including Anna Clyne, Elena Langer, and Ellen Reid.
Rakitina was Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2019 to 2023, where she was only the second woman in the orchestra’s history to hold the position. She concluded her tenure with a highly acclaimed performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Joshua Bell in August 2023. Previously, she was a Dudamel Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2019/20 season). Rakitina’s talents have been recognised through multiple awards, including second prize at the Malko Competition 2018, and further prizes at the Deutscher Dirigentenpreis’ 2017 and the TCO International Conducting Competition Taipei 2015.
Born in Moscow to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Rakitina grew up in a musical family and began her education as a violinist before studying conducting at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Stanislav Dyachenko and later in Hamburg with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr. She was finalist of ‘Das kritische Orchester’ in Berlin in 2018, participated in the Lucerne Festival Academy’s conducting fellowship scheme led by Alan Gilbert and Bernard Haitink. She has attended masterclasses with Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Jurowski, Johannes Schlaefli, and the 2022 Ammodo Masterclass conducting the Concertgebouworkest led by Fabio Luisi.
See Anna Rakitina conduct RSNO Plays Sibelius with the RSNO on 27 & 28 January 2026.
