Kirill Kondrashin & Alexander Sladkovsky
Biography Kirill Kondrashin & Alexander Sladkovsky
Kirill Kondrashin
one of the most distinguished domestic conductors of the 20th century, was born in 1914, in Moscow, to a family of musicians (his father was a self- taught violinist and later played in the orchestra of the State Jewish Theatre, and his mother played in the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre). He started to learn piano when he was six years old, and later was tutored in music theory by Nikolai Zhilyayev, an out- standing educator and a pupil of Taneyev’s, who influenced his creative development in many ways.
In 1931, Kondrashin entered the Moscow Conservatory to study operatic and symphonic conducting with Boris Khaikin. When a student, he was an assistant conductor at the music studio of the Moscow Art Theatre led by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Upon graduation in 1936, Kondrashin moved to Leningrad where he took the post of conductor at the Maly Opera and Ballet Theatre. He was awarded an honorary diploma at the 1st All-Union Conducting Competition in 1938.
In 1943, Kondrashin was invited to the Bolshoi Theatre, the company of which had just returned after evacuation. His direct contact with a constellation of the Bolshoi’s prominent conductors (Nikolai Golovanov, Samuil Samosud, Ary Pazovsky, Alexander Melik-Pashayev) had a strong influence on the formation of his artistic individuality. At the same time, Kondrashin was an active concert conductor, performing with various orchestras of Moscow and other cities (in 1949, the Moscow Youth Symphony Orchestra conducted by him received the Grand Prix of the Festival of Democratic Youth in Budapest).
In 1956, Kirill Kondrashin decided to devote his life to symphonic conducting only. He performed with a series of outstanding soloists such as David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels. In 1958, he was entrusted with the accompaniment to the participants of the third round of the 1st International Tchaikovsky Competition. Kondrashin and Van Cliburn, the winner of the competition, performed together in Great Britain and the United States of America (it is worthy of note that he was the first Soviet conductor to cross the Atlantic).
In 1960, Kondrashin became chief conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. During fifteen years of his leadership, he managed to make his orchestra one of the leading music collectives of the Soviet Union. He was the first conductor in this country to perform all symphonies by Mahler (except the Eighth) and Shostakovich. The conductor’s repertoire included symphonies and concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Myaskovsky and Proko ev. The conductor received the State Glinka Prize in 1969 and the title of People’s Artist of the USSR in 1972. One year later, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra received the honorary status “academic.”
In 1978, when Kondrashin was on tour in the Netherlands, he decided to stay in the West and took the post of Permanent Guest Conductor of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1981, the conductor was supposed to take the lead of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, but died suddenly of a heart attack on 7th March 1981.
Alexander Sladkovsky
was born in 1965, in Taganrog to a family of musicians. He graduated from the department of military conducting of the Moscow Conservatory and the department of operatic and symphonic conducting of the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he studied with professor Vladislav Chernushenko. In 1999, he won the 3rd All-Union Proko ev Conducting Competition.
His conducting debut took place in 1997 at the St. Petersburg Conservatory Opera and Ballet Theatre (he was chief conductor there between 2001 and 2003). In 2001, Sladkovsky conducted at the concert in honour of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands at the Hermitage Theatre. As an assistant conductor, he was invited by Mariss Jansons to take part in the production of Bizet’s Carmen and by Mstislav Rostropovich in the concert programme “Unknown Mussorgsky.”
Between 2004 and 2006, Alexander Sladkovsky was a chief conductor of the orchestra of the State Academic Capella of St. Petersburg, and between 2006 and 2010, he was a conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra Novaya Rossiya led by Yuri Bashmet. As a conductor, he performed with the leading symphony orchestras of Moscow and other cities of Russia, as well as orchestras of Dresden, Budapest and Belgrade.
Sladkovsky has been an artistic director and chief conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Tatarstan since 2010. During a six-year period with the orchestra he managed to increase its status in musical and social life of the Republic of Tatarstan and the entire country, expanding the palette of the orchestra’s creative capabilities and taking it to a new, international level. The orchestra has become Russia’s first regional collective to appear on Medici.tv and Mezzo. In April 2014, the orchestra conducted by Sladkovsky performed at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris during the ceremony of designating Denis Matsuev as “UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.” In May of the same year, the musicians from the Middle Volga Region appeared for the first time at the concert hall of the Tokyo International Forum. In the season of 2014/2015, Alexander Sladkovsky and his orchestra performed at the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia at the concert dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Crescendo Festival and in St. Petersburg, where they played their first seasonal series of three concerts on the stage of the Mariinsky Concert Hall.
Alexander Sladkovsky has been a Sony Music Entertainment Russia artist since 2013. In 2016, he received the title of People’s Artist of Russia.
Mahler’s symphonies performed by Kirill Kondrashin with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra half a century ago were a genuine revelation to the Soviet public. The Mahler LPs he managed to record instantly became collectable items. Kondrashin not just revived the tradition of “Russian Mahleriana” that was artifcially interrupted for three decades (until the mid-1930s, the name of Mahler was a regular feature on the concert bills of Moscow and Leningrad, but then actually forbidden), he performed Mahler in a completely new way. His interpretations marked with nobility of artistic taste, a subtle knowledge of Mahler’s style and an expressive individual reading were not inferior to the interpretations realized by the greatest Mahlerian conductors of the 20th century. Moreover, they do not pale in comparison even today. Many domestic conductors attempted to follow Kondrashin’s example, but none of them has ventured such an integral coverage of Mahler’s legacy. The more so because most of Kondrashin’s recordings were consigned to oblivion after he left the country, and so was until the 2000s when they were released by Melodiya already on CD.
For someone, this Kirill Kondrashin/Alexander Sladkovsky parallel may seem too bold. And yet, many musicians of the older generation are con dent that despite this 50-year difference, the famous Russian maestro and his distinguished predecessor have invisible artistic ties between them. This fact is even more surprising, knowing that Sladkovsky never happened to hear Kondrashin live in concert and is only familiar with his recordings. It recon rms that such bridges in time do exist regardless of temporal and spatial borders.
Coming from the so-called Moscow School (a pupil of Khaikin and Zhilyayev), Kirill Kondrashin matured as a conductor at Leningrad’s Maly Opera Theatre. Alexander Sladkovsky’s professional path also lay between the two capitals (it is only fair to say that Leningrad played a much bigger role in his life, – as the conductor admits, his acquaintance with Yuri Temirkanov’s inspired art predetermined his further course of life).
Before Kondrashin completely focused on symphonic conducting, he underwent a long practice as an operatic conductor; for Sladkovsky, that was the period of his work at the music theatre of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he had a chance to work with Rostropovich and Jansons.
A recognized interpreter of Russian and foreign classical music, Kondrashin dis- played an interest in contemporary music conducting works by Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, as well as Aram Khachaturian, Georgy Sviridov, Moisey Weinberg, Boris Tchaikovsky, Rodion Shchedrin and other Soviet composers. Sladkovsky also has a gift of understanding the music world of his contemporaries. His repertoire includes works by Shchedrin, who honoured the conductor with a very high appraisal, So a Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli, Roman Ledenyov, Sergei Slonimsky, Alexander Tchaikovsky, Alexei Rybnikov, Boris Tishchenko and young composers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. At the post of chief conductor of the Tatarstan orchestra, he not only conducted monographic cycles of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Shostakovich, but also recorded the Anthology of Music by Tatarstan Composers in 2012. Finally, the parallel between the two orchestras is obvious as both of them succeeded owing to the will of their leaders. Today, the State Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Tatarstan has won domestic and international recognition and is as much a cultural brand of this country as the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra was fty years ago.
Mahler, along with Shostakovich, was possibly a major accomplishment of Kondrashin as a symphonic conductor. The names of these two composers have an incredible pulling force for Alexander Sladkovsky as well. “I believe that Shostakovich is a continuation of Mahler,” the conductor says. “Shostakovich’s music has been something formative ever since I was little...” As for Mahler’s symphonies, he sees them as a “necessary stage, without which Shostakovich is impossible.” Now working on complete sets of Shostakovich’s concertos and symphonies, Alexander Sladkovsky could not go past Mahler’s symphonies. While his reading follows on from Kondrashin’s tradition, it is addressed to the modern listener. The synthesis of academic chastity of taste and emotional impulsivity only emphasizes the tragic greatness of Mahler’s spirit.
