Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (Russian: Владимир Давидович Ашкенази, scientific transliteration Vladimir Davidovič Ashkenazi, commonly known under the transcriptional Vladimir Ashkenazy eng, . Born July 6, 1937 in Gorky, Soviet Union ) is a Russian pianist and conductor with Icelandic citizenship in 1972 since 1978. he lives in Meggen LU, Switzerland.
Biography
Ashkenazi comes from a musical family. His Jewish father David Ashkenazi was a pianist in the entertainment industry; his mother Jewstolia Grigoryevna, born Plotnowa was an actress and the daughter of a Russian family of peasants. In 1943 the family moved to Moscow, where the family had to share an apartment for 13 years with other families. At the age of six years, Ashkenazy began playing the piano and showed up as early talent. A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Conservatory won Ashkenazi in 1955 the second prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. In 1956 he was allowed to travel to the West for the first time to attend the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels on competition. There, he won the first prize, as in 1962 at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. During his stay in Iceland, the birthplace of his wife from 1968 to 1978, he developed his skills as a conductor. Ashkenazi has a traditional, very comprehensive piano repertoire, but avoids contemporary music. Own account, he has small hands and short fingers, but also plays many works that are designed for large hands, like most of Rachmaninoff.
His pianistic recording activities is extensive as barely a second pianist. Starting with two volumes of the Well-Tempered Clavier of all the Mozart piano concertos, Beethoven's complete piano, violin and cello sonatas (the latter with Itzhak Perlman, and Lynn Harrell ), piano concertos and piano trios (the latter with Itzhak Perlman and Lynn Harrell ), the bulk of the piano works by Chopin and Schumann, Scriabin piano sonatas all up to all Prokofiev and Bartok piano concertos and many other works. Another focus is the work of Sergei Rachmaninoff: Here Ashkenazi has not only ( this up to four times ) recorded all major solo piano works and all piano concertos, but also all the songs (with Elisabeth Söderström ), almost all the works for two pianos ( with André Previn ) and that the major orchestral works, including piano concertos (the latter with Jean -Yves Thibaudet passed as a conductor at the piano ). He was also the first president of the Rachmaninoff Society.
From 1978, Ashkenazi started his career as a conductor. From 1987 to 1994 he was director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1989 to 1999 he also served as successor by Riccardo Chailly, the German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin. After that, he was the head of the Czech Philharmonic until 2003, and by 2007 the management of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. Since 2009 he has been chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. On recordings as a conductor may be mentioned, among others, the complete symphonies of Felix Mendelssohn, Jean Sibelius, Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff and especially Dmitri Shostakovich as well as many orchestral works by Richard Strauss.
His sons run the musical tradition of the family further. Dimitri Ashkenazy occurs as a clarinetist, Vovka Ashkenazy as a pianist.