Troussov / Weimar Staatskapelle / Serebrier
Biography Troussov / Weimar Staatskapelle / Serebrier
Kirill Troussov - Violinist
Born in St Petersburg, Kirill Troussov took his first violin lessons at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory at the age of four, going on to study with Zakhar Bron and Christoph Poppen and to win first prize at the Yehudi Menuhin, Oleg Kagan and the Wieniawski violin competitions. He has appeared as a soloist with international orchestras including the Munich Philharmonic, Bamberger Symphony, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Paris and Orchestre National de Montpellier under the direction of such conductors as Sir Neville Marriner, Daniele Gatti, Lawrence Foster, Jiri Belohlávek, Vladimir Spivakov, Mikko Frank and Louis Langrée. He is regularly invited to international festivals, including Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad and the Kronberg Academy, to perform as a soloist and in collaboration with artists such as Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, Heinrich Schiff, Christian Zacharias, Sol Gabetta, Yuja Wang, Julian Rachlin, Daniel Hope, Natalia Gutman, Dmitri Sitkovetsky and Gautier Capucon. In recital he has performed at the Munich Philharmonie, Berliner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Théâtre du Châtelet, Auditorium du Louvre, Théatre des Champs Elysées, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and the Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid.
José Serebrier - Conductor/ Composer
GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor and composer José Serebrier has received 39 GRAMMY® nominations in recent years, and has conducted at the GRAMMY® Awards in Los Angeles, televised live to 176 counhtries. He is one of today’s most frequently recorded conductors, with over 300 releases. Highly praised by Leopold Stokowski as “the greatest master of orchestral balance”, he served as the latter’s Associate Conductor at New York’s Carnegie Hall for five years, before accepting an invitation from George Szell to become Composer-in-Residence of the Cleveland Orchestra. Szell discovered Serebrier when he won the Ford Foundation American Conductors Competition (together with James Levine). Serebrier was music director of America’s oldest music festival, in Worcester, Massachusetts, until he organized Festival Miami, and served as its artistic director for many years. In that capacity, he commissioned many composers, including Elliot Carter’s String Quartet No. 4, and conducted many American and world premières. He has made international tours with the Russian National Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Toulouse Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of the Americas, National Youth Orchestra of Spain and many others. His first recording, Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, won a GRAMMY® nomination. His recording of the Mendelssohn symphonies won the UK Music Retailers Association Award for Best Orchestral Recording, and his series of Shostakovich’s Film Suites won the Deutsche Schallplatten Award for Best Orchestral Recording. Soundstage magazine selected Serebrier’s recording of Scheherazade with the LPO as the Best Audiophile Recording. He has recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Bournemouth Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Weimar, Bayerischer Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Baden Baden/Freiburg, Oslo Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, Czech State Philharmonic Brno, Sydney and Melbourne Symphonies and many others. As a composer, Serebrier has won most important awards in the United States, including two Guggenheims (as the youngest in that Foundation’s history, at the age of nineteen), Rockefeller Foundation grants, commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Harvard Musical Association, the B.M.I. Award, Koussevitzky Foundation Award, among others. Born in Uruguay of Russian and Polish parents, he has composed more than a hundred works. His First Symphony had its première under Leopold Stokowski when Serebrier was seventeen. His music has been recorded by conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner. His Third Symphony, ‘Symphonie Mystique’ (Naxos 8.559183), received a GRAMMY® nomination for Best New Composition of 2004. His Carmen Symphony CD, with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, won the Latin GRAMMY® for Best Classical Album. The French music critic Michel Fauré has written a new biography of José Serebrier, and his first recording with the New York Philharmonic was recently released to great international acclaim. His new Flute Concerto with Tango, premièred and recorded by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, receives its American première in October 2012 at Carnegie Hall in New York, with the American Composers Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier. For further information please visit: www.joseserebrier.com
Staatskapelle Weimar
Founded in 1491, the Staatskapelle Weimar is one of the oldest orchestras in the world, its reputation inextricably linked to some of the greatest works and musicians of all time. Franz Liszt, court music director in the mid-nineteenth century, helped the orchestra gain international recognition with premières that included Wagner’s Lohengrin in 1850. As Weimar’s second music director, Richard Strauss conducted first performances of Guntram and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. The orchestra was also the first to perform Strauss’s Don Juan, Macbeth and Death and Transfiguration. After World War II Hermann Abendroth did much to restore the orchestra’s former status and quality, ultimately establishing it as one of Germany’s leading orchestras. The Staatskapelle Weimar cultivates its historic tradition today, while exploring innovative techniques and wider repertoire, as reflected in its many recordings. The orchestra regularly collaborates with world-renowned soloists and conductors, and, in addition to international concert-tours, continues to cultivate the great operatic tradition in Weimar, especially of the late Romantic period. The young but already internationally renowned Swedish conductor Stefan Solyom was appointed General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Staatskapelle in August 2009. For more information, visit: www.nationaltheater-weimar.de
