Vladimir Ashkenazy

Among the foremost musical figures of our time, Vladimir Ashkenazy was born in Gorky, Russia in 1937. He began playing the piano at the age of six and was accepted at the Central Music School at the age of eight, eventually graduating 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 Ogdon 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. It is conducting that has formed the largest part of his activities in recent decades. Formerly Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (1988–1996), Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic (1998–2003), and Music Director of NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo (2004–7), from 2009 to 2013 he served as Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, collaborating on a number of exciting projects that include composer festivals, major recording projects, and international touring activities. His final concerts, in November 2013, featured Britten’s War Requiem. Alongside these positions, Ashkenazy has continued his longstanding relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra, of which he is also Conductor Laureate. In addition to his performances with the orchestra in London and around the UK each season, he appears with them worldwide and has developed landmark projects, such as Rachmaninov Revisited in 2002 at Lincoln Center in New York and Prokofiev and Shostakovich under Stalin in 2003, for which he also made a documentary. With an extensive repertoire that ranges from Bach to Bartók, Ashkenazy’s Decca discography comprises a vast number of recordings, several of which have received Grammy awards, including his Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti, for Beethoven’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Itzhak Perlman, a Ravel programme of solo works and Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues. Ashkenazy also holds the positions of Music Director of the European Union Youth Orchestra, with which he tours each year; Conductor Laureate of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. He maintains strong links with other major orchestras, including The Cleveland Orchestra (of which he was formerly Principal Guest Conductor), and as well as making guest appearances with many other major orchestras around the world.