Ignat Solzhenitsyn conducts

Outstanding contemporary musician Ignat Solzhenitsyn who has “won international acclaim as a subtle and intellectual interpreter of piano and chamber music” has recently “successfully developed a career as a conductor of symphony music.” At the Concert Hall he has appeared in both capacities. Solzhenitsyn has also taken part in tours by the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra with which he made his debut in 2009 in Samara during the Mstislav Rostropovich Festival. There he conducted Felix Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony. It is noteworthy that is was Rostropovich himself who once remarked that the young Solzhenitsyn should study music seriously.

A highly respected conductor, Artistic Director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and Principal Guest Conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra who has appeared at prestigious concert venues and worked with many acclaimed musicians, Solzhenitsyn admitted in an interview for Rossiiskaya Gazeta that “Russian orchestras have always stood apart for their splendid, rich and generous strings,” a quality he himself values in particular.

Solzhenitsyn already has experience of performing symphony music by Dmitry Shostakovich including the composer’s Fourteenth Symphony with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra in November 2010. On 30&January the musician will be making his Mariinsky Theatre debut as an opera conductor with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

The performance will also see opera singers making their debuts, with Varvara Solovieva appearing as Sonetka, Yuri Vorobiev as the Old Convict and Alexander Nikitin as the Chief of Police for the first time.