Vasily Eduardovych Petrenko (Vasily Petrenko) |

Vasily Petrenko

Vasily Petrenko, one of the most sought after conductors of the younger generation, was born in Leningrad in 1976. He began studying music at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Chapel of Boys – the Choir School. Glinka, the oldest musical educational institution in Russia. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in choral and opera and symphony conducting classes. Attended master classes by Yuri Temirkanov, Maris Jansons, Ilya Musin and Esa-Pekka Salonen. In 1994–1997 and in 2001–2004 he was a conductor at the Opera and Ballet Theatre. M. Mussorgsky (Mikhailovsky Theatre), in 1997-2001 – the theater “Through the Looking Glass”. Laureate of international competitions (Competition of choir conductors named after D.D. Shostakovich in St. Petersburg, 1997, 2002st prize; Cadaqués, Spain, 2003, Grand Prix; named after S.S. Prokofiev, St. Petersburg, 2004, 2007nd Prize). In XNUMX (after the death of Ravil Martynov) he was appointed chief conductor of the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra and led it until XNUMX.

In September 2006, Vasily Petrenko took up the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (England). Six months later, he was appointed chief conductor of this orchestra with a contract until 2012, and in 2009 the contract was extended until 2015. In the same 2009, he made his brilliant debut with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (The Guardian newspaper wrote: “the clarity and expressiveness of the sound were such that as if the conductor had been leading this orchestra for many years”), he became the chief conductor of this ensemble.

Vasily Petrenko has conducted many leading orchestras in Russia (including the St. Petersburg and Moscow Philharmonics, the Russian National Orchestra, the State Orchestra named after E.F. Svetlanov, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia), Spain (orchestras of Castile and Leon, Barcelona and Catalonia), the Netherlands ( Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra), North German (Hannover) and Swedish Radio orchestras.

In February 2011, it was announced that from the 2013–2014 season Petrenko will take the post of chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra (Norway).

Over the past few seasons, he has made successful debuts with a number of leading European orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. These performances were highly acclaimed by critics. With the Liverpool Philharmonic and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain he has participated in the BBC Proms and has toured with the European Union Youth Orchestra. The conductor also made his debut performances in the United States, including concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, orchestras of San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Baltimore and St. Louis.

The peaks of the 2010–2011 season were debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchester National de France, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras (USA), the NHK Symphony (Tokyo), and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (Australia) of the Accademia Santa Cecilia (Italy). Future engagements include European and US tours with the RNO and the Oslo Philharmonic, new concerts with the Philharmonia, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony, debuts with the Czech Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the Berlin Radio Orchestra, the Orchestra of Romanesque Switzerland, Chicago Symphony and Washington National Symphony Orchestra.

Since 2004, Vasily Petrenko has been actively collaborating with European opera houses. His debut production was Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades at the Hamburg State Opera. He also conducted three performances at the Dutch Reisopera (Puccini’s Willis and Messa da Gloria, Verdi’s The Two Foscari and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov), directed Puccini’s La Boheme in Spain.

In 2010, Vasily Petrenko made his debut at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival with Verdi’s Macbeth (a critic for The Telegraph noted that Petrenko “perhaps looks like an innocent teenager, but in his opera debut in the UK he demonstrated that he knew Verdi’s score along and across”) and at the Paris Opera with “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky. The conductor’s immediate plans include a debut at the Zurich Opera with Bizet’s Carmen. In total, the conductor’s opera repertoire includes more than 30 works.

Vasily Petrenko’s recordings with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra include a double album of rarely heard operas Rothschild’s Violin by Fleishman and Shostakovich’s The Gamblers, a disc of Rachmaninov’s works (Symphonic Dances and Isle of the Dead), as well as highly acclaimed recordings on Naxos , including Tchaikovsky’s Manfred (winner of the Gramophone Award for Best Orchestral Recording in 2009), Liszt’s piano concertos and an ongoing series of Shostakovich symphony discs. In October 2007, Vasily Petrenko received Gramophone magazine’s “Best Young Artist of the Year” award, and in 2010 was named “Performer of the Year” at the Classical Brit Awards. In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University, and was made an Honorary Citizen of Liverpool in recognition of his great services and the impact he had on the city’s cultural life as director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Source: Moscow Philharmonic website