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, San Francisco Symphony Orchestras as well as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Tonkünstler-Orchester, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in the past two seasons.

2023/24 season highlights include her return to Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and debuts with Utah Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, Staatsorchester Hannover, Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, Danish Chamber Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin at the Dresden Musikfestspiele. She has previously worked with orchestras such as Cincinnati, Baltimore and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras as well as Musikkollegium Winterthur, Nürnberger Symphoniker, NDR Radiophilharmonie (Hannover), Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Casa da Musica Porto, Orchestre National de Lille and Malmö Symphony Orchestra.

Anna Rakitina works with soloists such as Jean-Yves Thibaudet,  Alexandre Kantorow, Inon Barnatan, Joshua Bell, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Hadelich, Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlaff, Raphaela Gromes and Alisa Weilerstein. She also enjoys collaborations with today’s composers and has notably worked with Elena Langer and Ellen Reid in the recent years.

Rakitina was the 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 in the 2019/20 season. She won the second prize at the Malko Competition 2018, and further prizes at the ‘Deutscher Dirigentenpreis’ 2017 as well as 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 she studied conducting at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of Stanislav Diachenko. From 2016 to 2018 she studied conducting in Hamburg, Germany with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr and graduated with a diploma. She was a finalist of ‘Das kritische Orchester’ in Berlin in 2018, participated in the conducting fellowship scheme of the Lucerne Festival Academy led by Alan Gilbert and Bernard Haitink, and attended masterclasses with Gennadiy Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Jurowski and Johannes Schlaefli. In 2022 she participated in the Ammodo conducting masterclass of the Concertgebouworkest led by Fabio Luisi.

SEASON 2023/2024