John Axelrod
Conductor
“John Axelrod is a highly imaginative and dynamic musician, whose rich musicological
background and historical insights combine with intellectual drive and charismatic enthusiasm for
people and for life, to get probing, rigorous and richly characterized interpretations.”
In 2026, John Axelrod will celebrate his 60th birthday and 30 years of experience at the helm of almost 200 orchestras worldwide. The 2025-2026-2027 seasons will celebrate this anniversary with numerous orchestras with which he has established long-standing relationships, including the return to the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Turin, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari, the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, the Sinfonia di Sicilia and the Teatro la Fenice in Venice, the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra, the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, the Aichi Chamber Orchestra, the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra and the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra in Japan, the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the PhilZuid in the Netherlands, the Romanian Radio Orchestra and the Sinfonietta Cracovia and many others.
Guest conducting and CD productions have taken him to the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Filarmonica della Scala, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice, Orchestre de Paris, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, RSB Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, Staatskapelle Weimar and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. In 2018 he celebrated his debut with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, with the Philharmonia Orchestra London he appeared at the Teatro alla Scala at the MITO Festival 2022. His festival engagements include performances at the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Enescu Festival, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.
The operatic repertoire that Mr. Axelrod has conducted includes Bernstein's Candide at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Teatro alla Scala and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Eugene Onegin at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome and Martinu’s Mirandolina at the Teatro La Fenice. At the Lucerne Festival he conducted, among others: Rigoletto, The Rake's Progress, Don Giovanni, The Threepenny Opera, Falstaff and Idomeneo. He conducted Gianni Schicchi at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago in 2020, where he returned in 2021 for a new production of Turandot directed by Daniele Abbado.
John Axelrod has conducted CD productions for Sony Classical, Warner Classics, Ondine, Universal, Naïve and Nimbus, and has released a cycle of Brahms' symphonies and songs by Clara Schumann with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano on Telarc. In 2023, his recording with the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra (on Orchid Classics) was released with the two versions of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4, which was nominated as ICMA Best Orchestral Recording 2023. In 2020, he received the ICMA Special Achievement Award for his artistic achievements.
For three decades, John Axelrod has been particularly committed to the promotion of young musicians, leading tours of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra to the Salzburg Festival and conducting the Santander Orchestra and Sinfonia Iuventus in Poland, the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, the Accademia della Scala on tour in Muscat, the NordDeutsche Junge Philharmonie on tour in Germany and the Vienna Jeunesse Orchestra.
John Axelrod graduated from Harvard University in 1988. He was personally taught by Leonard Bernstein in 1982 and studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Ilya Musin in 1996. Christoph Eschenbach supported him from 1997 to 2000, when he made his debut as an assistant conductor with Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival.
