VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY – BIOGRAPHY
“When the Sydney Symphony Orchestra acquired Vladimir Ashkenazy as its new Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, Australian classical music fans rejoiced over their good fortune in landing an undisputed legend. Often regarded as one of the preeminent solo pianists of the present era, over the years, Ashkenazy has also acquired equally superlative esteem as a conductor.”
Time Out (Hong Kong), 14.10.2009
Vladimir Ashkenazy was born in Gorky. He began to play the piano at the age of six and was accepted at the Central Music School at the age of eight. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, having studied with Lev Oborin. He won second prize in the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1955, first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1956, and joint first prize with John Ogdonin in the 1962 International Tchaikovsky Competition. Since then, he has built an extraordinary career, not only as one of the most renowned and revered pianists of our times, but as an artist whose creative life encompasses a vast range of activities and continues to offer inspiration to music-lovers across the world.
Conducting has formed the largest part of his activities for the past 20 years. Formerly Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic (1998–2003) and Music Director of NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo (2004–2007), in January 2009 he took up the new position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. They collaborate on a number of exciting projects including composer festivals, major recording projects and international touring activities.
Alongside these positions, Ashkenazy continues his longstanding relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra of which he was appointed Conductor Laureate in 2000. In addition to his performances with the orchestra in London and around the UK each season, he tours with them worldwide, and has developed landmark projects such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich under Stalin in 2003 (a project which he also took to Cologne, New York, Vienna and Moscow) and Rachmaninov Revisited in 2002 at the Lincoln Center, New York.
Ashkenazy also holds the positions of Music Director of the European Union Youth Orchestra, with which he tours each year, and Conductor Laureate of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He maintains strong links with a number of other major orchestras, including The Cleveland Orchestra (of which he was formerly Principal Guest Conductor), San Francisco Symphony and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (Chief Conductor and Music Director 1988–96), as well as making guest appearances with many other major orchestras around the world, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, to whom he returned in October 2007.
Vladimir Ashkenazy has been an exclusive Decca artist since 1963, and as a pianist remains so. His discography comprises a vast number of recordings, many of which have been crowned with prizes, and his extensive repertoire ranges from Bach to Bartók. He received Grammy® Awards among others for Beethoven’s Piano Concertos with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti (1974), for Beethoven’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Itzhak Perlman (1979), a Ravel programme of solo works (1986) and Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues (1999). To mark his 70th birthday in 2007, Decca released his recordings of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations, Shostakovich’s complete Symphonies, A Personal Collection – compiled from Ashkenazy’s enormous catalogue of recordings for Decca – which embraces his work as one of the most acclaimed pianists of his generation as well as over 25 years as a conductor, and a DVD release with Beethoven’s Five Piano Concertos under Bernard Haitink. A programme of music for two pianos by Debussy and Ravel, recorded with his son Vovka Ashkenazy, was released in 2009; 2010 sees the release of Bach’s Six Partitas, which Vladimir Ashkenazy has recorded for the first time.
Ashkenazy has also been involved in several television projects, such as Music After Mao, filmed in Shanghai in 1979, and Ashkenazy in Moscow – a series of programmes marking his first visit in 1989 to the country of his birth since leaving the USSR in the 1960s. He has developed educational programmes with NHK TV including the 1999 Superteachers, in which he works with inner-city London school children, and in 2003–2004 a documentary based around his Prokofiev and Shostakovich under Stalin project.
www.vladimirashkenazy.com
3/2010
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.
