Royal Scottish National Orchestra & Patrick Hahn
Biographie Royal Scottish National Orchestra & Patrick Hahn
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra
is one of Europe's leading orchestras with a rich history stretching back over 130 years. It is one of Scotland's leading cultural institutions, and an orchestra with a variety of work that is almost unparalleled amongst its British peers.
Formed in 1891, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) is one of Europe's leading symphony orchestras.
Awarded royal patronage by Her Late Majesty The Queen in 1977, its special status in the UK’s cultural life was cemented in 2007 when it was recognised as one of Scotland’s five National Performing Companies, supported by the Scottish Government.
Led by Music Director Thomas Søndergård, the Orchestra performs across Scotland, including concerts in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth and Inverness and appears regularly at the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms. The RSNO tours internationally, most recently visiting China and Europe.
The RSNO has a worldwide reputation for the quality of its recordings, receiving a 2020 Gramophone Classical Music Award for Chopin’s Piano Concertos (soloist: Benjamin Grosvenor), conducted by Elim Chan, two Diapason d’Or awards (Denève/Roussel 2007; Denève/Debussy 2012) and eight GRAMMY Award nominations. In recent years, the RSNO has cultivated an international reputation for world-class film, television and videogame soundtrack recording. The Orchestra has recorded for BAFTA-winning series Silo (Apple TV) and worked with the likes of GRAMMY Award-winning composer Lorne Balfe on Life on Our Planet (Netflix). Other notable titles include Nuremberg (Sony Pictures), Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (Lionsgate), Horizon: An American Saga (Warner Bros) and Star Wars Outlaws (Ubisoft). The Orchestra records at its bespoke in-house facility in Glasgow.
The RSNO believes that music can enrich lives and aims to inspire, educate and entertain people throughout Scotland and beyond with its performances, recordings and engagement programmes. Supporting schools, families, young professionals and wider communities, the RSNO delivers high quality initiatives for all ages and abilities. Recent additions to the RSNO’s engagement offering have included an expansion of its singing strand to encompass Chorus Academies in Dundee and Glasgow, a lunchtime Workplace Choir and a Buggy Choir, in addition to the established and highly respected RSNO Youth Choruses and RSNO Chorus. The community choruses are designed with the benefits of group singing for health and wellbeing at their core and are open to all.
Patrick Hahn
is Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, General Music Director of Sinfonieorchester und Oper Wuppertal and Principal Guest Conductor of Münchner Rundfunkorchester of the Bayerischer Rundfunk. He is one of the most sought after and exciting conductors of his generation.
In his fourth season in Wuppertal, Patrick Hahn’s symphonic and choral programmes include Mahler’s Symphony No.5, Bruckner’s Symphony No.5, and Messiaen’s Turangalila, to name but few. The operas there this season include R. Strauss’ Salome and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
As a guest conductor in the 2024/25 season, Patrick Hahn makes his first appearances at hr-Sinfonieorchester, Brussels Philharmonic with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Anastasia Kobekina, RAI with Truls Mork, Semperoper Dresden conducting R. Strauss’ Intermezzo and Staatsoper Hamburg with Wagner’s Parsifal. Return visits include Deutsche Symphony Orchester Berlin with Gabriela Montero, Wiener Symphoniker and Tonhalle Orhestra Zürich. He will also take part in the Johann Strauss 2025 celebration in Vienna, celebrating the 200th anniversary by conducting a concert performance of Der Karneval in Rom.
Previous seasons’ highlights include his successful debut at Zürich Opera House with Barrie Kosky’s new production of Die lustige Witwe and New National Theatre Tokyo with Der Fledermaus as well as debuts with Bamberg Symphony, alongside Sol Gabetta and SWR with Istvan Vardai. Patrick Hahn enjoys a regular relationship with Klangforum Wien and Wiener Symphoniker, most recently conducting Schoenberg’s Ertwartung with Dorothea Röschmann at the Vienna Musikverein. Patrick has acted as Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor for Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic between 2021/23.
Patrick Hahn’s has conducted many cornerstones of the repertoire in his time in Wuppertal, such as R. Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie, Bruckner’s Symphony No.4 and No.9, Mahler’s Symphony No.1 and No.2, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9, Wagner/Maazel’s Ring without Words, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Tannhauser, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, as well as rarely performed gems such as Charles Ives’ Symphony No.2, von Einem’s Capriccio, Op.2.
Patrick Hahn and Münchner Rundfunkorchester’s exploration and recordings of rarely performed repertoire such as Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis and Alexander Zemlinsky’s Eine Florentinische Tragoedie have received critical acclaim. Other recordings include Alpha label’s Britten and Bruch’s Violin Concertos with Kerson Leong and Philharmonia Orchestra and Beethoven’s Piano Concertos No.1 and 2 with Olivier Cave and Kammerakademie Potsdam.
Aside from his work in classical music, Patrick Hahn accompanies himself on the piano singing cabaret-songs by the Austrian satirist and composer Georg Kreisler. As a jazz pianist, he received awards from the Chicago Jazz Festival and the ‘Outstanding Soloist Award’ from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse as the best jazz pianist of the 37th Annual Jazz Festival.
