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Vladimir Ashkenazy

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

Vladimir Ashkenazy was born in 1937 in Gorky, today's Nizhny Novgorod. His father was a pianist and composer, his mother an actress. He began playing the piano at the age of six and studied at the Moscow Conservatoire. He came second at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1956 and shared first prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 with John Ogdon.

Music and breakthrough

In 1963 he left the Soviet Union with his Icelandic wife and settled in London. Later he lived in Iceland and Switzerland. From 1963 he recorded for Decca. He committed an enormous repertoire to disc: the piano concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, the sonatas of Beethoven and Scriabin, the piano works of Chopin and Rachmaninoff and the twenty-four preludes and fugues of Shostakovich. With violinist Itzhak Perlman and cellist Lynn Harrell he made chamber music recordings with which he won Grammy Awards. In 1982 his own orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition was released.

Influence

Halfway through his career Ashkenazy also began conducting. He led, among others, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. On stage he stood out by wearing a white polo-neck instead of white tie and tails. In 2020 he stopped performing. His flight from the Eastern Bloc and his broad, faithful recording work make him one of the most important pianists of the late twentieth century.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to his recording of Pictures at an Exhibition and notice the difference between the piano version and the orchestral version. Which passages sound more powerful on the piano?

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists