Yuri Simonov was born in Saratov, USSR, into a family of opera singers. He first took up the baton at the age of 12, conducting his school orchestra performing Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. He studied at Leningrad Conservatoire with Nikolai Rabinovich and was Evgeny Mravinsky’s assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1968 Mo. Simonov was the first Russian conductor ever to win a Western conducting competition when he entered the Santa Cecilia Conductors Competition in Rome. After making his Bolshoi Opera debut in 1969 with Aida, the company appointed him the Chief Conductor – the youngest in the Bolshoi’s history. He then became their longest serving Chief Conductor, holding the post until 1985. Highlights of this period with the Bolshoi Opera were the re-introduction of Wagner to the repertoire after a forty-year absence and several memorable tours which he led to Paris, Japan, Vienna, New York, Milan and Washington. Also, he conducted many new productions there, including Glinka’s Russlan and Ludmilla, Shchedrin’s Anna Karenina, Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Shostakovich’s The Golden Age, Bartok’s Bluebeard Castle and The Wooden Prince.
In 1982 he made his British debuts, at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, conducting Eugene Onegin, and with the London Symphony Orchestra. Since then Maestro Simonov has conducted all the leading British orchestras. In 1986 he opened the Royal Opera’s season at Covent Garden with Verdi’s La Traviata.

In 1985 he founded the Maly Symphony Orchestra in Moscow and toured with them to Poland, Hungary, Germany, Italy and all over the former Soviet Union.
Mo. Simonov made his American concert debut with the Boston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras in 1989. The following year he made his American operatic debut in Los Angeles (Verdi’s Don Carlos with Plácido Domingo), followed by Mussorgsky’s Khovanschina for San Fransisco Opera with Nikolai Ghiurov in 1990 and Eugene Onegin with Renee Fleming in 1993. With Boston Symphony Orchestra he conducted at the Tanglewood Festival in 1998. His debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra was in 1997. During the last two decades Mo. Simonov has also continued his long-lasting contact with Budapest Opera, conducting a Wagner opera every year. From 1994 to 2002 Mo. Simonov was the Music Director of the Belgian National Orchestra and since September 2002 he became their honorary conductor, leading their tours to Germany, England, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. Since 1998 he has been the Chief Conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he tours extensively all over the world, and since 2001 he has been the Musical Director of the Liszt-Wagner Orchestra in Budapest.

In recent seasons he toured the USA, UK, France, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. He also undertook further international tours with the Belgian National Orchestra and returned to the NHK Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in the Prague Spring Festival. He made debuts with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Warsaw National Philharmonic, and Brabant Orchestras and conducted complete cycles of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and new productions of Pikovaya Dama and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in Budapest.