Anna Rakitina serves as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under its music director, Andris Nelsons; only the second woman to hold this position, she has become a much-loved member of the orchestra’s family. Previously, she served as a 2019–20 Dudamel Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducting youth concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall as well as education and community programs such as Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA).
Rakitina made her highly acclaimed Tanglewood debut in the summer of 2021, and this season appears again on the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s subscription series. Additional 2021–22 season highlights include debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre national de Lille, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Elgin Symphony Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and, in these concerts, the New York Philharmonic. In the 2022–23 season she will appear with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tonkünstler-Orchester, and Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, among others.
She has worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lucerne Festival Strings, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Jenaer Philharmonie, George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony, Meiningen Court Orchestra, National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia, The Critical Orchestra, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Royal Northern College of Music Chamber Orchestra, and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra.
Born in Moscow to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Anna Rakitina began her musical education as a violinist. She later studied conducting at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of Stanislav Diachenko, who served as assistant to Gennady Rozhdestvensky. She studied conducting in Hamburg, Germany, with Ulrich Windfuhr, beginning in 2016 and graduated with a diploma in 2018. During her studies she conducted stage performances of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Iolanta, Rachmaninoff’s Aleko, and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and she wrote her PhD thesis on Rachmaninoff.
As a participant in the Lucerne Festival Academy Conducting Fellowship, Rakitina took part in masterclasses with Alan Gilbert in 2016 and Bernard Haitink in 2017. She has also participated in masterclasses led by Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Jurowski, and Johannes Schlaefli.
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