Biography

Riccardo Chailly was born in Milan in 1953 and studied at the conservatories of Perugia, Rome and Milan, as well as at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana. He began his musical career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. In 1980, he was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, moving in 1988 to the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for 16 years. From 2005 to 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Since 2015, he has held the position of Music Director of La Scala in Milan, and since summer 2016 he has also been Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

Riccardo Chailly regularly conducts leading European orchestras, such as the Berliner and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. In the USA, he has worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As an opera conductor – in addition to his performances at La Scala, Milan – he has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London, the Opernhaus Zürich, with the Bavarian and Vienna State Operas, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera.

Riccardo Chailly has received numerous awards for his 150-plus CDs, including two “ECHO KLASSIK” awards (in 2012 and 2015). Gramophone magazine declared his recording of the Brahms symphonies “Recording of the Year 2014“. Riccardo Chailly is a Grand’Uf?ciale della Repubblica Italiana, a Cavaliere di Gran Croce and a Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion. In 1996, he was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in France, he was appointed Of?cier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2011.