BertieBaigent

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.