Charlie Siem is one of today’s foremost young violinists, with such a wide-ranging diversity of cross-cultural appeal as to have played a large part in defining what it means to be a true artist of the 21st century.

Born in London to a Norwegian father and British mother, Siem began to play the violin at the age of three after hearing a broadcast of Yehudi Menuhin playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. He received a broad and thorough education at Eton College, before completing the intellectually demanding undergraduate degree programme in Music at the University of Cambridge. From 1998 to 2004 he studied the violin with Itzhak Rashkovsky in London at the Royal College of Music, and from 2004 he has been mentored by Shlomo Mintz.

Siem has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the Bergen Philharmonic, Camerata Salzburg, Czech National Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony, Moscow Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He has worked with top conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Edward Gardner, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Roger Norrington, Libor Pešek and Yuri Simonov. International festival appearances to date include Spoleto, St. Moritz, Gstaad, Bergen, Tine@Munch, Festival Internacional de Santa Lucía, and the Windsor Festival. Siem’s regular sonata partner is renowned pianist Itamar Golan.

Highlights of the previous seasons included concerto debuts in Mexico, Munich, and Milan; recitals in Norway with Itamar Golan; a debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Maestro Charles Dutoit; and an eight-concert debut recital tour of Australia, culminating with a performance at the Sydney Opera House. Charlie Siem enjoys a strong presence in China, where during the 2016/2017 season he was named Cultural Ambassador of Nanjing, and gave fifteen concerts at major venues across the country (including Beijing, Harbin, Nanjing, Shanghai, Xiamen, and Xuzhou), a tour of the Bruch concerto with the Israel Philharmonic an Maestro Zubin Mehta ; Siem’s USA concerto debut ( Sibelius Concerto with Jacksonville Symphony and Music Director Courtney Lewis) ; a tour with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra; and a South American recital tour with Itamar Golan.

Charlie Siem has a varied discography and has made a number of recordings, including with the London Symphony Orchestra (Warner Classics, 2011) and Münchner Rundfunkorchester (Sony Classical, 2014).

A great believer in giving to worthwhile causes, Siem is an ambassador of The Prince’s Trust. He is also a Visiting Professor at Leeds College of Music in the UK and Nanjing University of the Arts in China. He gives masterclasses around the world at top institutions such as the Royal College of Music in London, and the Accademia di Musica in Florence.

Passionate about bringing classical music to new audiences around the world, in addition to his classical performance career Siem has revived the age-old violinistic tradition of composing virtuosic variations of popular themes, which he has done alongside artists including Bryan Adams, Jamie Cullum and The Who In 2014, he wrote his first composition – Canopy, for solo violin and string orchestra – which was commissioned by USA television station CBS Watch!, and recorded with the English Chamber Orchestra. Siem has also had numerous collaborations with fashion brands including Armani, Chanel, Dior, Dunhill, and Hugo Boss.

Charlie Siem plays the 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin, known as the ‘D’Egville’.

The Philharmonia was founded in 1945 by EMI producer Walter Legge, originally as a recording orchestra for the growing home audio market. We have worked with a who’s who of 20th- and 21st-century music. Herbert von Karajan, Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini and Riccardo Muti are just a few of the great artists to be associated with the Orchestra, and we have premiered works by Richard Strauss, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Errollyn Wallen, Kaija Saariaho and many others. We have always pioneered the use of technology to reach broader audiences for orchestral music. During the Coronavirus pandemic, we continued to create outstanding performances designed to experience online. We played for lifelong fans and first-time listeners in Brazil, Sudan, Indonesia, India, and high above the Arctic Circle in Norway.

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, in the heart of London, has been our home since 1995. We also have residencies at venues and festivals across England: Bedford Corn Exchange, De Montfort Hall in Leicester, The Marlowe in Canterbury, Anvil Arts in Basingstoke, the Three Choirs Festival in the West of England, and Garsington Opera. Central to all our residencies is a Learning & Engagement programme that empowers people to engage with, and participate in, orchestral music.

The Philharmonia is a registered charity. We rely on income from a wide range of sources to deliver our programme. We are proud to be supported by Arts Council England, and grateful for the generosity of the many individuals who make up our supporter family, as well as the Trusts and Foundations who underpin our work. In the US, the Orchestra’s American Patrons generously support the Philharmonia Foundation, a US-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation.

Oleg Caetani is an opera and concert conductor. He finds these two aspects of his work equally important.
Caetani considers Nadia Boulanger to be the driving inspiration of his career. She discovered his talent, initiated him to music and gave him the philosophical approach to life, linked to Montaigne, that he still has today.
At the Rome Conservatory of Santa Cecilia he attended Franco Ferrara’s conducting class and studied composition with Irma Ravinale. At the age of 17, he made his theatre debut with a production of Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and other madrigals that he organized himself. After studying all the Shostakovich Symphonies with Kondrashin at the Moscow Conservatory, he graduated with Mussin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with maximum votes, conducting Shostakovich’s fifth symphony. Winner of the RAI Turin competition and Karajan Competition in Berlin, he started his career at the Berlin State Opera “Unter den Linden” as repetiteur and assistant of Otmar Suitner. That experience in a great German opera house with all Wagner and Strauss works gave a decisive turn to his repertoire.
Caetani’s deep experience, now of almost thirty years, in the opera repertoire by Verdi, Mussorgsky and Wagner (including several Ring productions) has influenced his approach to the great works also symphonic works, of the twentieth century (particularly Bartok, the second Viennese school and the French impressionism).
The first opera Caetani conducted at the age of 24, was Eugene Onegin in 1981, when graduating from St. Petersburg’s Conservatory. Since then has Tchaikovsky played an important role in his repertoire. He conducted new productions of Orleanskaya Deva (Joan of Arch) in Strasbourg (first performance in France in 1998), The Queen of Spades with J. Schaaf in Stuttgart, and Nutcracker with the Swiss architect Mario Botta in Zürich. He recently recorded all Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies including Manfred (2008). The Financial Times wrote: “Do we need another set of Tchaikovsky symphonies? Having listened and re-listened to these live recordings, the answer is an emphatic yes. Caetani is not an indulgent Tchaikovskyan... he lets Tchaikovsky speak for himself: the contrapuntal rigour, the emotional tenderness, the occasional hint of hysteria within a classical structure... a treasure at any price”.
After conducting Oedipe by Enescu as his first professional opera performance in 1983, Caetani has endeavoured to conduct the wonderfully original music of Enescu whenever possible. As a result, following his performances of Oedipe as opening of the 2009 Enescu Festival in 2009, he received the legion of honor of the Romanian Republic for performing Enescu’s music around the world.
Caetani has also devoted himself to recording and conducting other less-known composers of the twentieth century such as Mossolov, Pizzetti, Gerhard etc.
Since the studying time, Shostakovich’s music has a central role in his repertoire. Caetani translated the libretto of The Nose in German for his production in Frankfurt in 1991. He conducted the Italian premiere of the operetta Moscow Cheriomushki in 2007 and has conducted many first performances of Shostakovich’s symphonies all over the world as well as recording Italy’s first complete cycle of Shostakovich symphonies with the Verdi Orchestra in Milan. The CDs have won several prizes: 10/10 from Classical Today in USA, ffff Télérama in France and Record Geijutsu in Japan.
Since 1999 Caetani has a particularly close relationship with the Sydney Symphony, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Verdi Orchestra and with them he has also toured in South America (2003) and Spain (2009). In April 2008, he conducted the Verdi Orchestra in a concert presented by the Italian President to Pope Benedetto XVI. in the Vatican which was recorded live for Eurovision TV.
In 2001 he made his debut at La Scala, Milan with Turandot, returning there in 2005 to conduct Otello. He opened the 2001 season of the Theatre of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Don Pasquale.
Recent engagements have included Vaughan Williams’ Sir John In Love and Khovanchina at the English National Opera, a company with which Caetani has a particularly close relationship, The Flying Dutchman at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, L’enfant et les sortilèges at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, La voix humaine coupled with The Bluebeard Castle and Don Carlos in Köln, Madama Butterfly in Berlin and in London at the ENO etc. He regularly conducts orchestras such as Staatskapelle Dresden, Munich Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Gewandhausorchester, Wiener Symphoniker (with whom he has recorded Poliuto by Donizetti for Emi-Cbs), Orchestre National de Radio France, the RAI National Symphonic Orchestra, l’Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Yomiuri Orchestra, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow etc.