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Valery Gergiev

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Valery Gergiev is a Russian conductor and opera director, born in 1953 in Moscow and raised in Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia. From 1972 to 1977 he studied at the Leningrad Conservatoire, with Ilya Musin as his main conducting teacher. In 1978 he became assistant conductor at the Kirov Opera, today's Mariinsky Opera, where he made his debut with Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace. Since 1988 he has been artistic director of the Mariinsky, and in 1996 he was appointed general director.

Music and breakthrough

In the West he broke through in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1985 he made his British debut, in 1988 he stood before the London Symphony Orchestra for the first time, and in 1991 he conducted Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in Munich. From 1995 to 2008 he was principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2007 he became principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and in 2015 of the Munich Philharmonic. At the end of 2023 he also became artistic director of the Bolshoi Theatre. He is the first to lead both theatres at the same time, and he also organises the White Nights festival in St Petersburg. At a concert in Palmyra in 2016 and one in Tskhinvali in 2008 he commemorated victims of violence.

Influence

Gergiev is controversial because of his support for the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin. In March 2022 Munich dismissed him, because he refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That makes him an example of how politics and classical music can become intertwined.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to a recording of Gergiev with the London Symphony Orchestra, for example a symphony by Prokofiev, and notice how the orchestra grows from very soft to very loud.

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists