Leonid Korchmar

Conductor

• Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation.
• Honoured Artist of the Republic of Northern Ossetia-Alania.

Korchmar studied Operatic/Symphonic Conducting with Leo Ginzburg at the Moscow State Conservatory and graduated from the Leningrad State Conservatory from the class of Ilya Musin. He was a Diploma-winner at the 1981 All-Russian Conductors Competition, and from 1982 to 1984 served as Assistant Conductor of the Leningrad Academic Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Dimitriev. From 1976 to 1979 he served as Conductor of both the Voronezh and Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) Philharmonic Orchestras, and in 1979 became Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Saratov Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he held until 1984. He served as conductor for Saint-Petersburg Opera from 1986 to 1989, and for the past 17 years has been a staff conductor of the State Academic Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre.

Leonid Korchmar has appeared as a guest conductor with many orchestras of the former Soviet Union, including both orchestras of the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of Russia, the Petrozavodsk Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic Orchestra, the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dnepropetrovsk Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philharmonic Orchestras of Kuibyshev, Omsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Vladikavkaz and Kazan. He has worked with the orchestras of Estonian National Opera and Latvian National Opera, and the opera theatres of Novosibirsk, Kazan and Vladikavkaz. From 2001 to 2003 he conducted and directed productions of Il Barbiere de Sevilla and La Sonnambula at the Opera Festival of Kurosaara, Estonia. He has performed with the Mariinsky Theatre on international tours to Finland, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Chile.

At the Mariinsky Theatre Leonid Korchmar conducts:
Bellini: La Sonnambula, Norma (in concert), Bizet: The Pearlfishers (in concert), Donizetti: L´elisir d´amore (in concert), Lucia di Lammermoor, Glinka: Ruslan and Ludmila, Gluck: Orpheo ed Euridice (in concert), Leoncavallo: I Pagliacci, Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana (in concert), Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov, Prokofiev: Love for Three Oranges, The Fiery Angel, The Gambler, Betrothal in a Monastery, Semyon Kotko, Purcell: Dido and Aeneas (in concert), Rimsky-Korsakov: Kashchei the Immortal, Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Saint-Saens: Samson et Dalila, R. Strauss: Salome, Ariadne auf Naxos, Verdi: Nabucco, Otello.

Leonid Korchmar likewise has a vast symphonic repertoire, including all the major works from the Baroque to the present era. During his career, Korchmar has personally collaborated with many important composers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, including Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Sergei Slonimsky, Boris Tishchenko and Giya Kancheli. He has also worked with renowned soloists such as Leonid Kogan, Viktor Tretyakov, Vladimir Krainev, Vladimir Feltsman, Bella Davidovich, Natalia Gutman, Oleg Kagan, Igor Oistrakh, Elisso Virsaladze, Ivan Monigetti and Vladimir Viardo.

Korchmar is also in high demand as a conducting pedagogue. He teaches operatic/symphonic conducting at the St Petersburg State Conservatory and leads various conductor training programs, giving masterclasses in Russia, the United States and Finland.