Year by year, more women join the top ranks of orchestral conductors but they are still likely to be cast in the role of “pioneers”. There are many firsts in the career of New York-born Karina Canellakis: the first woman to be named chief conductor of a Danish orchestra (in 2018), the first woman to conduct the Nobel Prize concert (also 2018), the first woman to conduct the First Night of the BBC Proms (2019). So it goes on.
We haven’t seen much of her in this country but since in 2020 she became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s – you guessed it – first female principal guest conductor, we can hope to see more of her. Last night with the LPO she offered a condensed survey of Russian composers, travelling backwards from the 21st century (Victoria Borisova-Ollas) through the 20th (Shostakovich) to the 19th (Tchaikovsky).
