Winner, Grand Prix, International Conducting Competition Rotterdam 2022
Music Director, Waterperry Opera Festival
Bertie Baigent came to international attention as the winner of the Grand Prix, Classical Prize, and Symphonic Prize at the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam 2022, following his ‘imposing’ and ‘spectacular’ performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and the world premiere of Joey Roukens’s Night Flight with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.
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Other recent highlights have included concerts with Orchestre National de Lille at BOZAR in Brussels, a tour with Phion Orkest culminating with Bertie’s debut in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, St Louis Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, and Teatro Regio Torino. Bertie was due to conduct the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo in 2022 before Covid-19 forced him to withdraw. |
Since then he has established a strong presence on the international stage with a busy series of debuts and return engagements, including in the last season the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, CBSO, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Tampere Philharmonic, and Bruckner Orchester Linz. In the 2024/25 season he looks forwards to further debuts with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Maggio Musicale in Florence, and the Osaka Philharmonic, working with soloists such as Imogen Cooper and Cédric Tiberghien, as well as returning to Glyndebourne and Opera Holland Park.
“Bertie Baigent is a force to be reckoned with” (Opera Magazine) |
Also active on the operatic stage, Bertie co-founded and has been Music Director of Waterperry Opera Festival since 2017. There he has conducted acclaimed productions of all the Mozart/da Ponte operas, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Bizet’s Carmen, and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. He made his Glyndeboune Festival debut in 2023, stepping in at four hours’ notice to conduct L’elisir d’amore, and has returned every season since then; in 2025 Bertie works on the festival’s first ever production of Parsifal, and he looks forward to returning to conduct in the coming seasons. Further opera productions include Handel’s Partenope, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and his own Paradise Lost, performed to sell-out audiences in London in 2022. This season he also conducts Semele at Opera Holland Park.
“The RSNO...ably cued and shaped by nimble, insightful conductor Bertie Baigent” ***** (The I)
Bertie works regularly in the world of historically informed performance – recently conducting the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century in performances and radio broadcasts of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto – including directing from the harpsichord for Waterperry’s annual Messiah performances, Bach’s St John Passion, and forthcoming performances of the St Matthew Passion and Mass in B minor.
Bertie was born in Oxford and studied the cello and piano before moving towards conducting and composition. He read music at the University of Cambridge and subsequently studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music with Sian Edwards. As an assistant conductor Bertie worked closely with artists such as Lahav Shani, Sir Mark Elder, and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on major international tours; he also served as cover conductor for the Dallas and St Louis Symphony Orchestras.
“Baigent guided the orchestra carefully through this complex and lush sonority, gradually building up the momentum to a magnificent finale” (Bachtrack)