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Since its foundation, the orchestra’s primary activity has been making studio and concert recordings for the national music archive, which is available to radio and television programmes. The orchestra performs an interesting and colourful programme of concerts, attracting a diverse audience. Its repertoire is made up of compositions from the treasure trove of the international music repertoire of all artistic periods, as well as anthologies and premiere performances of works by Slovenian composers. In the third millennium, it has also gained a broad circle of listeners with concerts of orchestrated popular music, primarily performed together with prominent songwriters and performers from the Slovenian music scene. The orchestra has recorded almost the entire Slovenian symphonic repertoire and has received numerous prestigious awards for the best interpretations of Slovenian compositions. Its Slovenian and international discographies are both extraordinarily extensive, with recordings by the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra being available on more than 400 compact discs.

The roots of the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra are directly linked with the emergence of the radio house and later the television house brought together in the institution RTV Slovenia. After its foundation in 1928, the radio house employed permanent ensembles of musicians to create the music programme. Their number gradually increased until 1946, when the Radio Ljubljana Orchestra numbered some 65 members. The orchestra’s activities ceased in 1947, when the Slovenian Philharmonic was established and the orchestra members gained a new employer, coming under the auspices of the Philharmonic. Later, due to the needs of its own music production, the radio made efforts to re-establish the orchestra. The first chief conductor of the newly formed orchestra was Uroš Prevoršek (1955–1966). He was followed by Samo Hubad (1966–1980), Stanislav Macura (1980–1981), Anton Nanut (1981–1998), Lior Shambadal (2000–2003) and David de Villiers (2003–2006). The orchestra’s current chief conductor is the excellent Chinese conductor En Shao, who took over the position of September 2006. In the last decade, the orchestra has attracted the greatest attention of the specialist public with resounding projects undertaken in collaboration with renowned conductors and soloists, including Christian Mandeal, Rossen Milanov, Marko Letonja, Joe Hisaishi, Angela Georghiu, Roberto Alagna, Marcello Alvarez, Mischa Maisky, Stefan Milenković, Emanuelle Bertrand, Aldo Ciccolini, Radu Lupu, Mate Bekavac, Irena Grafenauer, Marjana Lipovšek, Ivo Pogorelić, Evelyn Glennie, Mikhail Rudy, The King’s Singers, Konstantin Bogino, Mario Brunello, Jose Carreras, Radek Baborak, Sarah Chang, Dejan Lazić, Ning Feng, Claude Delangle, Sergei Nakariakov, Daniel Raiskin, Vadim Guzman, Alexei Volodin, Michel Legrand and others.  

The RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra appears regularly in European music capitals. In recent years, it has gained international acclaim with performances in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Musikverein and Konzerthaus, and the Cologne Philharmonic Hall, as well as on tours and at individual concerts in other European Union states. The RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra is a member of the international network of orchestras ONE – Orchestra Network Europe, founded by EU program Creative Europe.