• Honoured Artist of Russia (2008)
• Diploma-recipient at the 2nd Russian Conductors’ Competition (1988)
• Prize-winner at the Hajnówka International Competition, Poland (1st prize, 1993)
Andrei Petrenko graduated from the Leningrad State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire, specialising in choral, opera and symphony conducting. Andrei Petrenko’s performing career began in 1981 as a production conductor at the Leningrad State Musical Comedy Theatre; he subsequently became the Director of the Smolny Cathedral Chorus and was a guest conductor of the Congress Orchestra of St Petersburg. From 1989 to 2000 he taught choral and symphony conducting at the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire, in addition to holding international master-classes with foreign students. Andrei Petrenko has toured to more than twenty countries with various choruses, ballet companies and symphony orchestras of St Petersburg. He has staged productions of operas in Finland (Gounod’s Faust in Pori) and in Estonia (Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia in Tallinn).
Since 2000, Andrei Petrenko has been the Mariinsky Theatre’s Principal Chorus Master. Among the most outstanding productions in which he has been involved in recent years are operas such as Les Troyens, Benvenuto Cellini, Attila, Un ballo in maschera, The Nose, War and Peace, Prince Igor, Eugene Onegin, The Love for Three Oranges, A Life for the Tsar, The Golden Cockerel, Christmas Eve, La Bohème, Parsifal, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Turandot, Götterdämmerung, Der Fliegende Holländer, Jenůfa, The Gambler, Nabucco, Otello, The Enchantress, The Brothers Karamazov, The Enchanted Wanderer, Dead Souls, Tristan und Isolde and The Mystery of the Apostle Paul.
Since 2008, Andrei Petrenko has been a guest conductor with the Chorus of Radio France.
Andrei Petrenko’s repertoire as an opera conductor includes Aida, Eugene Onegin, La traviata, Samson et Dalila, Don Pasquale, Le nozze di Figaro, Il barbiere di Siviglia , Haydn’s The Apothecary and Schubert’s Die Zwillingsbrüder. He has also conducted the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Giselle, Don Quixote, Chopiniana, Carmen-Suite, Karen Khachaturian’s The Adventures of Cipollino and Igor Rogalyov’s Peter Pan and the operettas Die Fledermaus, Die Lustige Witwe, Die Czardasfürstin, Das Veilchen vom Montmartre, La Belle Hélène and Gräfin Mariza; he has prepared a series of concert programmes featuring soloists of the Mariinsky Opera Company, Chorus and Symphony Orchestra. He directed the world premiere of Vladimir Martynov’s opera Vita Nuova at the Moscow House of Music during the IV Moscow Easter Festival.
Andrei Petrenko’s repertoire also includes Bach’s Johannespassion, Handel’s oratorio The Messiah, Requiems by Mozart and Berlioz, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Stravinsky’s Les Noces and Symphony of Psalms, Gavrilin’s Chimes, Sibelius’ symphonic poem Kullervo, Rachmaninoff’s cantatas Spring and The Bells, Sviridov’s Kursk Songs and Kokkonen’s Requiem as well as various symphony programmes. In 2009 at the III International Chorus Festival commemorating Russia Day, Andrei Petrenko conducted the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus in a performance of Alexander Levin’s Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (world premiere).
Under the baton of Andrei Petrenko, the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus has performed a cappella programmes at prestigious concert venues throughout Russia and in Lithuania, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Great Britain and Israel.
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