Ryan Bancroft – Chief Conductor Designate 2023/24

Bancroft’s first performance as Chief Conductor Designate was the prestigious Nobel Prize Concert on December 8, 2021. The concert was streamed worldwide via the Nobel Prize Youtube channel. For viewers in Sweden, it was livestreamed on SVT Play. This concert is now available on Konserthuset Play along with several other concerts featuring Ryan Bancroft and the orchestra.

During season 2022/23 the Chief Conductor Designate conducts several concerts with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra – extracts from the concert calendar available at the end of this article.  

Ryan Bancroft comments:

“It’s incredibly difficult to put into words what it means to be appointed Chief Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra: moved, elated, overjoyed, and all other superlatives in between. This is an orchestra that knows how to set a gold standard of music making and takes very seriously music’s ability to communicate to people like you and me; no moment is taken for granted. In my inaugural concert as Chief Conductor we will perform the prominent Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström’s seminal work, The High Mass, for the first time in the orchestra’s history. I know this will be the first of many memorable performances together, and I for one cannot wait to see what the future holds for us.”

The orchestra’s Executive and Artistic Director Stefan Forsberg adds:

“We struck gold, he’s a unique talent! There is a fabulous chemistry and truly sparkling energy between Ryan and the Orchestra. His thoughtful readings of the score make every rehearsal and concert a revelation. With Ryan, we take off from an impressive and solid musical foundation built by his predecessors over the past 20 years, our Conductor Laureates Sakari Oramo and Alan Gilbert.”

Ryan Bancroft debuted with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2019. He first came to international attention the previous year, when he won both First Prize and Audience Prize at the prestigious Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen.

“Ryan is nothing less than a great discovery”, Stefan Forsberg continues. “The future for this partnership looks dazzlingly bright. And how appropriate to present our Chief Conductor Designate during the Nobel week along with the Nobel laureates awarded for discoveries.”

Forsberg stresses the importance of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s four core areas of interest: honouring musical traditions, performing both contemporary and Swedish music, and continuing the orchestra’s pioneering work on a more gender-balanced repertoire. 

Ryan Bancroft

Widely-acknowledged as one of the finest conductors of his generation, Ryan Bancroft was born in 1989, and grew up in Los Angeles. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and in the Netherlands at the Nationale Master Orkestdirectie.

Bancroft lives in London. He currently serves as Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Artist in Association with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. He was recently announced the winner of the Conductor Award at the 2021 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards.

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra

The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1902 and has since 1926 made its home in Konserthuset Stockholm in the city centre. The orchestra endeavours to reinvigorate and expand the traditional symphonic repertoire, organising an annual, internationally renowned composer festival and regularly commissioning and premiering new works.

The orchestra regularly works with a prestigious list of guest conductors, for instance Nathalie Stutzmann, Karina Canellakis, Herbert Blomstedt, Simone Young and Andris Nelsons, alongside the orchestra’s title conductors Sakari Oramo and Alan Gilbert (Conductor Laureates) and Franz Welser-Möst (Eric Ericson Honorary Chair).

The orchestra also participates annually at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. Through tours and award-winning recordings the orchestra has confirmed its international standing, to the point of being called ‘one of the finest orchestras in the world’ (Die Welt).