Karina Canellakis

Conducting monumentally difficult symphonies by Mahler and Shostakovich from early in her career, Karina Canellakis is often recognised for the vigour and elegance of her performances. Born into a New York City family of classical musicians, Canellakis studied violin at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. After graduating in 2004, she spent two years in the Berlin Philharmonic’s Academy Orchestra, where conductor Simon Rattle took notice and encouraged her to develop her conducting skills. Despite promise as an orchestral violinist—regularly substituting with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—Canellakis enrolled in the Juilliard School’s conducting programme. A turning point came in 2014, when Canellakis was named assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and stepped in for music director Jaap van Zweden, who was injured. Without a single rehearsal, she led Shostakovich’s formidable Eighth Symphony. Other last-second successes followed, including an unrehearsed Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony after a soloist fell ill in Montreal. In 2018, Canellakis became chief conductor of Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, with which she has made crisp recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (with pianist Alice Sara Ott) and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. In 2019, Canellakis became the first woman to conduct the First Night of the BBC Proms, with a characteristically complex program featuring Janáček's Glagolitic Mass. Within a year Canellakis was named principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic and Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestras.