BertieBaigent

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  • Conductor
Bertie Baigent
Bertie Baigent

About Bertie

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.​

Since then he has established a strong presence on the international stage with a busy series of debuts and return engagements, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Tampere Philharmonic, and Bruckner Orchester Linz. In the 2024/25 season he made 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, and in 2025/26 he looks forwards to debut engagements with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, Orchestre de Chambre du Luxembourg, as well as returns to Glyndebourne and Opera Holland Park.

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. Further opera productions include Handel's Semele at Opera Holland Park, and his own Paradise Lost, performed to sell-out audiences in London in 2022.

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 is based in London

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Contact

For availability and general enquiries:

Kate Sweeney

Kate Sweeney

Artist Manager
Chiara Fahy-Spada

Chiara Fahy-Spada

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Season Highlights

Oct 2025
Glyndebourne Festival
Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Feb 2026
Orchestre Chambre du Luxembourg
Ades, Couperin Studies Ravel, Le Tombeau de Couperin Haydn, Farewell SYmphony
Jun 2026
Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege
Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege
Jul 2026
Glyndebourne Festival
Rossini: Il Turco in Italia

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  • Britten A Midsummer Night's Dream at Glyndebourne

    Glyndebourne
    Oct 2025

    • The Glyndebourne Sinfonia needed no transformation but under the magic wand of conductor Bertie Baigent, they were on dazzling form, navigating with éclat this most volatile of scores as it skitters about from toybox to fairy-tale romance, from slapstick to sorcery. Britten’s romantic writing can sometimes sound a little austere: not here, there was a full and generous warmth to the passages that balanced the eerie chill of the moonlit forest.

    • Atmosphere is wonderfully conjured up as much in the pit, as on stage, by conductor Bertie Baigent with The Glyndebourne Sinfonia. Subtle, Debussyan sonorities are sustained to recreate the magic of the forest’s shadows. There are richer romantic depths, as in the opening of Act Two where the orchestra’s gentle throb is reminiscent of the night scene in the equivalent Act of Tristan und Isolde; or more dramatic, dynamic passages, such as the altercations between the two pairs of lovers. But the ensemble’s generally veiled sound always lets the voices come to the fore, even in heightened moments so that there is a fine balance among all the musical elements throughout.

  • Britten The Turn of the Screw at Waterperry Opera Festival

    Oxfordshire
    Aug 2024

    • The conductor, Bertie Baigent, achieved a precision and an expressive subtlety that you would have thought impossible

    • Bertie Baigent coaxed fine playing from the 13 instrumentalists of the Waterperry Festival Orchestra, his direction demonstrating a keen ear for balance and an alertness to Britten’s distinctive and ever-changing palette. With music-making as exceptional as this, Waterperry’s Turn of the Screw is a fine example of the company’s ambition and vision.

  • Hermann and Bernstein with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra

    Usher Hall, Edinburgh
    May 2024

    • The RSNO, sparkily conducted by Bertie Baigent, imbued Bernard Herrmann’s music for Hitchcock’s film Vertigo with nerve-jangling immediacy and shimmering passion, and the biggest adrenaline rush of the evening came from the exhilarating pile-up of rhythms in the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story.

      • Simon Thompson, The Times
      • 05 May 2024

    • The RSNO…ably cued and shaped by nimble, insightful conductor Bertie Baigent. There was a more traditional orchestral set-up after the interval for Baigent’s vivid, strongly characterised Vertigo music by Herrmann, plus Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, played with just the same vigour and enthusiasm. It was a concert of surprises, connections, and revelations. *****

  • Bizet Carmen at Waterperry Opera Festival

    Oxfordshire
    Aug 2023

  • Donizetti L'elisir d'amore at Waterperry Opera Festival

    Oxfordshire
    Aug 2021

    • The irrepressible Baigent conducted his own rescoring for ten instruments with flair and spirit

      • Mark Valenica, Opera Magazine
      • 17 August 2021

    • Donizetti's score sounded as idiomatically fresh, effervescent and dynamic as you could ever expect.

  • Dove's Ariel and Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at Waterperry Opera Festival

    Oxfordshire
    Aug 2020

    • ...Bertie Baigent conducted with great flair and energy, and played the harpsichord for the recitatives. He somehow kept the ensemble very tight, even in the swift ensembles, although the physical arrangements often denied him line of sight to his singers. His instrumentalists responded expertly throughout...

  • Cantelli Conducting Competition

    Italy
    Sep 2020

    • ...Baigent whipped up collective forces into a storm in the wildly swirling tarantella and saltarello, adroitly unravelling the yarn of interweaving musical threads while eliciting vigorous percussive interjections...

      • Musical America on Cantelli competition
      • 17 September 2020