Live Shostakovich Seven Fri 30 October – Sun 1 November

Bassem Akiki is a Lebanese–Polish conductor and composer whose individuality and creative flair have taken him to theatres, festivals and orchestras around the world. Recent collaborators include with Dutch National Opera, La Monnaie, Philharmonie de Paris, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa and Sinfonia Varsovia. Informed by his own work as a composer, Akiki is a specialist in contemporary repertoire and has conducted many world premieres. Recent successes include Philip Venables’ We Are the Lucky Ones and Alexander Raskatov’s Animal Farm at Dutch National Opera, the latter which won the OPER! Award for world premiere of the year in 2023. He regularly works at La Monnaie/De Munt, where he has conducted world premieres of Björk’s Medúlla, Orfeo and Majnun (also at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), Mark Grey’s Frankenstein, and most recently Philippe Boesman’s final opera On purge bébé. Other world premieres include Nicholas Lens’ Slow Man at Malta Festival Poznań, Zad Moultaka’s Hémon and Simon Steen-Anderson’s Don Giovanni’s Inferno at Opéra National du Rhin.

Akiki recently made his debuts with Warsaw Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Danish Opera and Finnish National Opera. Forthcoming debuts and returns include to London’s Royal Opera, Ruhrtriennale, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Opéra de Lille, Opéra de Lyon, Dutch National Opera, Opéra National du Rhin, Théâtre du Châtelet and Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa, among others. He made his professional conducting debut aged 24 with Verdi’s La traviata at Opera Wrocławska, where he was resident conductor until 2013. Since then, he has built an extensive repertoire of titles from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten to Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, Adès’ Powder Her Face and Penderecki’s Die schwarze Maske.

Aside from conducting, Akiki is a scholar in the music of East and West and their mutual influence, giving lectures on the subject, and his interest in astronomy and prime numbers has influenced his recent compositions. He has led masterclasses in institutions such as Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel of Waterloo, Opera Academy of La Monnaie, and Swarthmore College, Philadelphia, where he also performed Barbara Wysocka and Michał Zadara’s Chopin Without Piano.

See Bassem Akiki conduct Shostakovich Seven with the RSNO on 30 and 31 October and 1 November.

Hailed by the UK’s Daily Telegraph for his “searingly poetic lyricism”, Philippe Quint has established himself as one of America’s preeminent violinists, enchanting audiences through his performances that seamlessly blend consummate musicianship with “breadth of tone and passion” The New York Times.

With multiple Grammy Award nominations to his name, Quint is celebrated for his distinctive approach to classical core repertoire, advocacy for contemporary music, rekindling of neglected repertoire, and original multimedia story-telling programs including: The Muse, Homage to J.S.Bach, Charlie Chaplin’s Smile and The Legend of Astor Piazzolla with his Quint Quintet and members of the Joffrey Ballet.

Quint has soloed with some of the world’s finest orchestras across the globe including the London Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Quint’s unwavering dedication to contemporary music has resulted in numerous premieres of works by some of the most exceptional composers of today including Errollyn Wallen, Lera Auerbach, Lora Kvint, Vivian Fung, James Lee III, and Jakub Ciupinsky while continuing to highlight eminent American composers William Bolcom, Lukas Foss, John Corigliano, Leonard Bernstein, Henry Cowell and Ned Rorem.

In the spring of 2024, Quint unveiled an exciting premiere of a violin concerto especially written for him by a Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen. The co-commissioned premieres included Quint’s returns to the Calgary Philharmonic with Rune Bergmann, the Kansas City Symphony with Matthias Pintscher, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra with Joana Carneiro, the Brevard Festival Orchestra with Keith Lockhart, the North Carolina Symphony with Carlos Miguel Prieto and a West Coast premiere at the Cabrillo Festival with Cristian Macelaru. Forthcoming are the German and Spanish premieres of the Concerto with the Magdeburg Philharmonic and Anna Skryleva and with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia and Catherine Larson-Maguire.

In the spring of 2025, Philippe will release Errollyn Wallen’s Concerto on the PENTATONE label, performed with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the baton of Andrew Litton. The album will also feature Lera Auerbach’s Concerto No. 1, composed for Philippe in 2001.

Other notable performances include appearances with the London Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony, the Weimar Staatskapelle, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa, the China National Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia, the KBS Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin Komische Oper Orchestra and MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing under the batons of such renowned conductors such as the late Kurt Masur, Marin Alsop, Edo De Waart, Andrew Litton, Tugan Sokhiev, Ludovic Morlot, James Gaffigan, Carl St. Clair, Michael Stern, Vladimir Spivakov, Cristian Macelaru, Kristian Jarvi, JoAnn Falletta, Krzysztof Urbanski, Jorge Mester, Jahja Ling, Krzysztof Urbanski, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Steven Sloane and Bramwell Tovey.

Making his home in New York since 1991, Quint studied at the Special Music School for the Gifted with the famed violinist Andrei Korsakov making his orchestral debut at the age of nine. He earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School. His distinguished pedagogues and mentors included Dorothy DeLay, Cho-Liang Lin, Masao Kawasaki, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Arnold Steinhardt and Felix Galimir.

Philippe Quint plays the magnificent 1708 “Ruby” Antonio Stradivari violin on loan to him through the generous efforts of The Stradivari Society®.

See Philippe Quint performing Lera Auerbach’s Violin Concerto No1 with the RSNO on 30 October, 31 October and 1 November 2026.