Philharmonia Orchestra

The Philharmonia Orchestra is led by its Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor Esa-Pekka Salonen. It has been resident at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall since 1995 and normally presents a season of around 50 performances, with orchestral programming complemented by series including Philharmonia at the Movies, Music of Today, the Philharmonia Chamber Players and an Insights programme.

The orchestra has residencies at Bedford Corn Exchange, De Montfort Hall in Leicester, the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, The Anvil in Basingstoke (where it is Orchestra in Partnership), the Three Choirs Festival and Garsington Opera. At the heart of these residencies is the education programme Orchestra Unwrapped; the intergenerational creative music-making community project Hear and Now; and the urban-classical project Symphonize. An Emerging Artists programme aims to develop the next generation of composers and instrumentalists.

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s the orchestra's chief conductor was Otto Klemperer, with whom the orchestra gave many concerts and made numerous recordings of the core orchestral repertoire. During Klemperer's tenure Legge, citing the difficulty of maintaining the orchestra's high standards, attempted to disband it in 1964, but the players, backed by Klemperer, formed themselves into a self-governing ensemble as the New Philharmonia Orchestra. After thirteen years under this title, they negotiated the rights to revert to the original name.