Richard Bernas

Richard Bernas

Gramophone Award-winning conductor Richard Bernas was born in New York City. Based in London for many years, he has conducted most of the UK’s finest orchestras and performed extensively in Europe. An important part of his activity is working with many of today’s leading composers. The scope of Richard’s collaborations with composers has ranged from the world premieres of Nicholas Maw’s Odyssey at the Royal Festival Hall and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Sternklang in the Berliner Tiergarten to James Dillon’s Oceanos for the BBC Proms.

He made his Royal Philharmonic Orchestra debut in March 2009 conducting Samuel Barber’s First Essay and Leonard Bernstein’s On the Waterfront for Destino (Dance United) at Sadlers Wells. The Bernstein, coupled with other American film scores, was then recorded for the RPO’s own CD label and this was also used as the soundtrack of a documentary about Dance United’s unique outreach programme (Sky Arts). Subsequent appearances with the RPO have included works by Beethoven, Elgar, Mozart, Puccini, Verdi and Gorecki.

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