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9/2/2008 | Alexander Vedernikov, Mikhail ...

Alexander Vedernikov

Alexander Vedernikov quickly became established as an opera conductor when he started working with Moscow's Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre in 1988. He was appointed Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre in 2001, where he has staged and led many productions - including a new production of Boris Godunov in the original Mussorgsky orchestrations (2007), Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (2006), Puccini's Turandot (2006), Prokofiev's Cinderella (2006), Prokofiev's War and Peace (2005/2006), Leonid Desyatnikov's The Children of Rosenthal (world premiere on 23 March 2005, commissioned by the Bolshoi Theatre), Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel (2004), Glink's Ruslan and Ludmila (2003), Musorgsky's Khovanshchina (2002) and Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur (2002). Under his direction, the Bolshoi opera has toured extensively including a series of performances at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in July 2006 and a tour to Germany in February 2007. Mr Vedernikov has appeared as guest conductor at a number of Italian opera houses such as La Scala in Milan, Turin Royal Theatre, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, La Fenice Theatre in Venice and the Rome Opera. In April 2005, he made his debut at the Bastille Opera in Paris conducting a new production of Boris Godunov directed by Francesca Zambello.

Mr Vedernik's musical commitment as a symphony conductor are also numerous. He has toured throughout Russia and been a guest conductor with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra in tours of Austria, Germany, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

In 1995, he founded the Russian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and was the artistic director and chief conductor of this orchestra until 2004. He has conducted Russia's State Symphony Orchestra and the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the St Petersburg Philharmonic. He has toured with the Russian National Orchestra in France, Germany and the United States, and in January 2004, Alexander Vedernikov made his debut with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C.

He collaborates with the Saxon State Orchestra in Dresden, symphony orchestras in Montreal, Sydney and Budapest, the Tokyo, London, Stockholm and Hamburg philharmonic orchestras, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Teatro Colon Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino opera festival and the Orchestra of Italian Switzerland; he has also presented symphony programmes at Teatro Comunal in Florence and Teatro Comunale in Cagliari.

Mr Vedernikov was born in Moscow into a musical family - his father was a soloist at the Bolshoi Theatre and his mother a professor of organ at the Moscow Conservatory. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory and completed his postgraduate studies in 1990.

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Mikhail Ovrutsky

Mikhail Ovrutsky was born in Moscow in 1980. He started to play violin at the age of just five, under the direction of Zoya Makhtina at a special school for musically gifted children. He continued his studies at the Juilliard School of Music (Dorothy DeLay) and Curtis Institute of Music (Yumi Scott and Victor Danchenko) and at the Cologne University of Music (Zakhar Bron). In 2005 he became an assistant to Professor Bron.

Presently, Mr Ovrutsky is employed as concert master at the Beethoven Orchestra in Bonn. He has won numerous prizes at prestigious international competitions - first prizes in the Unisa International Violin Competition in Pretoria, Pablo Sarasate International Violin Competition in Pamplona, Johansen International Competition in Washington, D.C., and Liana Issakadze International Violin Competition in St. Petersburg. He is also laureate of the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow and the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels.

Mr Ovrutsky has performed with major orchestras around the world, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Vlaams Radio Orchestra, Pablo Sarasate Orchestra in Spain, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Orchestra in St. Petersburg with Valery Gergiev, Patra National Symphony in Greece and Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra in Yokohama, Japan.

As a soloist and chamber music player, he has given concerts at a number of festivals, including the Kronberg Academy's "Chamber Music Connects the World" where he performed with Yuri Bashmet a Menahem Pressler. He records for the Warner Classics and Naxos labels

In 2004 he received a scholarship from Anne-Sophie Mutter's Circle of Friends foundation, and in 2006 received the European Scholarship Prize for Young Artists.

Mikhail Ovrutsky plays on a Giofferedo Cappa violin made in Torino in 1700.

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Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra is one of the leading as well as one of the oldest orchestras in the Czech Republic. Its rich history starts in 1926 and is connected to the first broadcasts of Czech Radio's Radio Journal. Founder Josef Charvát and particularly composer and conductor Otakar Jeremiáš played crucial roles in these early days of the orchestra's existence. After 1945, the orchestra was transformed into a large symphony orchestra that major artists - such as Karel Ančerl, who later became the head of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and particularly Alois Klíma - worked with as principal conductors. The radio symphony orchestra has regularly performed at the Prague Spring festival since 1947, and it has regularly travelled internationally since 1961. The 1970s were the era of the major Czech music interpreter and conductor Jaroslav Krombholc, who was replaced by František Vajnar. Václav Talich, Václav Neumann, Libor Pešek, Charles Münch, Franz Konwitschny, Hermann Scherchen, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Charles Mackerras and others have all hosted with the radio orchestra. Sergey Prokofiev, Ottorino Respighi, Arthur Honegger, Aram Khachaturian, Ernst Křenek and Krysztof Penderecki have presented their works here; contemporary music also always occupied an important place with the orchestra.

Since 1985, the orchestra has been led by Vladimír Válek, who the very next year travelled with the orchestra to Japan. The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra is a regularly guest practically throughout Europe, and it has performed in South Korea, China, Taiwan and the United States. In the 2007/08 season it visited Vienna, Klagenfurt and Frankfurt; in Athens it performed Zemlinsky's opera Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) and Schoenberg's monodrama Erwartung (Expectation). In February 2008 the completed a tour with its principal conductor Vladimír Válek and soloists Jan Simon, Benjamin Schmid and Carlo Jans, where they performed to audiences in Salzburg, Innsbruck, Stuttgart, Cologne and Marnach (Luxembourg).

The orchestra finished the concert season with their ninth tour of Japan, with concerts at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Osaka Symphony Hall and other prestigious venues.

Since 2005 it has been the orchestra in residence at the Český Krumlov International Music Festival; besides its season at the Rudolfinum, it is also a regular guest at major Czech festivals - Prague Autumn, Moravian Autumn, Janáček's May and Smetana's Litomyšl. The orchestra also works with a number of renowned soloists (Mischa Maisky, Alexander Rudin, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Raphael Oleg, Viktor Tretyakov, Josef Suk, Pierre Amoyal, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Gabriela Beňačková, Eva Urbanová, Simon Estes, Sharon Kam, Wolfgang Schulz, Hansjoerg Shellenberger, Mikhail Rudy, Ian Fountain, James Tocco, Ivan Moravec, Marián Lapšanský, Eugen Indjic, Jan Simon, Stanislav Bunin and Ivan Klánský).

The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra regularly records for radio and on compact discs for Czech and international recording labels, including Supraphon, Pony Canyon, Radioservis, Clarton and Praga. In 2004 it recorded the complete symphonies of Antonín Dvořák, in 2005 the complete symphonies of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and in 2006 it released the world premiere of Václav J. Tomášek's piano concertos with Jan Simon. In 2007, Supraphon released an extensive project - Smetana's orchestral works, and the latest result of the orchestra's recording work is the complete symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů, a co-production between Supraphon and Czech Radio. In 1996 the radio orchestra won the music critic's Cannes Classical Award at the international music industry trade fair Midem for its recording of Ervín Schulhoff's piano concertos with soloist Jan Simon. Via the international music exchange within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra's recordings reach hundreds of thousands of listeners around Europe and worldwide.

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