Anna Rakitina made her North Carolina Symphony debut in January, 2025 with a program including the Dvořák Violin Concerto, with soloist Stella Chen; Haydn’s Symphony No. 101, “The Clock;” and Leonora’s Dream, by Elena Langer.
Anna Rakitina has conducted the Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, and Vancouver symphony orchestras; the San Francisco, Houston, Utah, North Carolina, and Jacksonville symphonies; the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; and the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic in the United States. European engagements have included Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and SWR Symphonieorchester. Further afield, she had her Japan debut with Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in 2023. In 2025, she received the prestigious European Cultural Award in recognition of her extraordinary talent and remarkable contributions to the world of classical music.
Rakitina opens the 2026/27 season at the Brucknerfest Linz performing Zimmermann’s trumpet concerto “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See” with Hakan Hardenberger, followed by the season opening of the Grazer Philharmoniker with pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. Further highlights of the season include debuts with the Spanish National Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester and Hamburger Symphoniker, as well as the Nashville and Omaha symphonies and Symphony San Jose. She enjoys working with the new generation of musicians and appears with the Bundesjugendorchester and the Bergen Youth Orchestra. Conducting the Konzerthausorchester Berlin at the Opus Klassik 2026 Gala is another highlight of the season.
An advocate of new music and female composers, her repertoire includes Anna Clyne, Elena Langer, Ellen Reid, Jessie Montgomery, and Caroline Shaw. She regularly collaborates with soloists such as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Lucas & Arthur Jussen, Joshua Bell, Augustin Hadelich, Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlaff, Gautier Capuçon, Alisa Weilerstein, and Xavier de Mestre.
Rakitina was Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2019 to 2023, and Dudamel Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 2019/20 season. Her awards include second prize at the Malko Competition 2018 and prizes at the Deutscher Dirigentenpreis 2017 and the TCO International Conducting Competition Taipei 2015.
Born in Moscow to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Rakitina grew up in a musical family and began her education as a violinist before studying conducting at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Stanislav Dyachenko and later in Hamburg with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr. She was a finalist of “Das kritische Orchester” in 2018 and participated in Lucerne Festival Academy’s conducting fellowship scheme led by Alan Gilbert and Bernard Haitink. She lives in Berlin with her family.
