Anna Rakitina

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 Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras as well as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra.

© photo Julia Piven

In 2025, Rakitina received the prestigious European Cultural Award in recognition of her extraordinary talent and remarkable contributions to the world of classical music.
The 2025–26 season sees Rakitina make debuts with the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland, Bournemouth Symphony, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra on tour in Europe. She opens the season with Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier, with further notable appearances with Orchestre National de Lyon, SWR Symphonieorchester, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano and Turku Philharmonic, and returns to Helsingborg Symphony to conduct Brahms’ “Requiem”.
Further afield, she made debuts with the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of St Luke’s in summer 2025 and returns to Asia for performances with the Malaysian Philharmonic and Korean National Symphony. An advocate of new music, she will conduct the US premiere of Fazil Say’s “Mandolin Concerto” with Avi Avital and Pacific Symphony, and the German premiere of Steingrimur Rohloff’s Horn Concerto with Stefan Dohr.
In recent seasons, Rakitina has worked with orchestras such as BBC Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Dresdner Philharmonie, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Gothenburg Symphony, Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg. In North America, she has appeared with notable orchestras such as the Baltimore, Cincinnati, Houston, Utah, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras.
She regularly collaborates with soloists including Joshua Bell, Renaud Capuçon, Gautier Capucon, Augustin Hadelich, Lucas & Arthur Jussen, Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlaff, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, 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.
Previously, she was a Dudamel Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 2019-20 season. Her talents have been recognised through multiple awards, including second prize at the Malko Competition 2018, and prizes at the Deutscher Dirigentenpreis 2017 and the TCO International Conducting Competition Taipei 2015.
Anna 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 a finalist of ‘Das kritische Orchester’ in 2018 in Berlin and participated in 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 Concertgebouworkest led by Fabio Luisi. Anna Rakitina lives in Berlin with her family.