About this Artist

The young Russian conductor ANNA RAKITINA has been appointed assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led by its Music Director Andris Nelsons, for a two-year term beginning with the 2019/20 season, and will thus become only the second woman assistant conductor in the Boston Symphony’s history.

In addition to her upcoming responsibilities in Boston, Anna Rakitina is a newly named 2019/20 Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Under the supervision of the orchestra’s Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, she will conduct Los Angeles Philharmonic’s youth concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall and develop her craft through involvement in the LA Phil’s orchestral, education, and community programs such as Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA).

Second-prize winner of the 2018 Malko competition in Copenhagen, third-prize winner of the 2017 Deutscher Dirigentenpreis in Cologne, and third-prize winner of the 2015 TCO International Conducting Competition in Taipei, Anna Rakitina has already conducted such orchestras as the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, Symphoniker Hamburg, Orchestra di Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lucerne Festival Strings, Lucerne Festival Academy orchestra, National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia, Bucharest George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, and National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.

In the 2019/20 season, Anna Rakitina will make her debut with the Orchestre National d’Île de France, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, the Sinfonieorchester Biel Solothurn in Switzerland, and the Jenaer Philharmonie in Germany, amongst others.

Anna was born in Moscow and has degrees from the Moscow Conservatory in both musicology (she has written a PhD thesis about Rachmaninoff) and conducting, with a graduate diploma in conducting from the Hochschule Hamburg, which she earned in 2018. She participated in a 2016 master class with Alan Gilbert in Lucerne and a 2017 master class with Bernard Haitink. Further positive impact came from Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Jurowski, and Johannes Schlaefli. During her studies, Anna conducted staged performances of Eugene Onegin and Iolanta by Tchaikovsky, Aleko by Rachmaninoff, The Rape of Lucretia by Britten, and others.

Together with conductor Sergei Akimov, Anna Rakitina founded the Moscow-based Affrettando Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble that is much talked about in Russia because of its high artistic level and well-thought-out programs.