BORUSAN ISTANBUL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA    
 

Türkiye’s leading symphonic ensemble, the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (BIPO) was founded in 1999 under honorary conductorship of Gürer Aykal. The orchestra worked with Sascha Goetzel between 2009 and 2020, and then with Patrick Hahn for two seasons. In 2023 BIPO decided to continue with Carlo Tenan as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor. 

From the 2000/01 season on, BIPO regularly performed on both coasts of its home city accompanying world stars and in time has become one of the city’s cultural beacons. It had also been the resident orchestra of the Istanbul Music Festival between 2003–2018. BIPO worked with world-class artists such as Renée Fleming, Hilary Hahn, Elīna Garanča, Angela Gheorghiu, Lang Lang, Maxim Vengerov, Juan Diego Flórez, Viktoria Mullova, to name a few. 

BIPO released its first international CD with works by Respighi, Hindemith, Schmitt in 2010 and performed that year at the opening festivities of the Salzburg Festival. Their second CD with Goetzel, Music from the Machine Age, was released in 2012, the third featuring works of Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Erkin and Ippolitov-Ivanov was released in 2014; and the fourth CD with Turnage & Berlioz was released in 2018 again by Onyx. BIPO accompanied Ksenija Sidorova on Carmen, her first album recorded with the prestigious classical record label Deutsche Grammophon and released in June 2016. The CD recording titled Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto; Rococo Variations (2017) and Baïka (2018) performed by Nemanja Radulović accompanied by BIPO is on the Deutsche Grammophon label. The CD entitled Richard by tenor Daniel Behle with Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Rösner was released in 2023 on the Prospero label. BIPO's ninth album, recorded under the direction of Carlo Tenan, is scheduled for release under the Onyx label in March 2025.