Kirill Kondrashin

b. 1914 (Moscow) · d. 1981 (Amsterdam)

Kirill Kondrashin was a Soviet conductor and music educator, born in Moscow on March 6, 1914, into a musical family. He began piano lessons at six and studied at the Stasov Music School and its associated college. Music theory lessons with Nikolai Zhilyayev helped broaden his musical knowledge. In 1931 he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied opera and symphonic conducting with Boris Khaikin.

While a student, Kondrashin played percussion in the orchestra of the Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater and made his conducting debut there in 1934, leading Robert Planquette’s operetta The Bells of Corneville. After graduating in 1936, he became a conductor at the Small Opera and Ballet Theater in Leningrad. His productions there included works by Puccini, Mussorgsky, Mozart, and other composers.

In 1943 he joined the Bolshoi Theater, where his repertoire included Serov’s The Power of the Fiend, Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden. He also conducted concerts from 1938 and began working regularly as a symphonic conductor in the second half of the 1940s. He taught at the Moscow Conservatory in 1950–1953 and 1972–1978.

After leaving the Bolshoi in 1956, he worked exclusively as a symphonic conductor. From 1960 to 1975 he led the Moscow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, performing a wide range of classical and contemporary music. The orchestra’s programs included all of Mahler’s symphonies and all 15 of Shostakovich’s symphonies; Kondrashin conducted the first performances of Shostakovich’s Fourth and Thirteenth symphonies in 1961 and 1962. He toured widely in Europe and the Americas and performed with soloists including David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Emil Gilels, and Van Cliburn.

Kondrashin made recordings of works by Brahms, Mahler, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich, among others. In 1960 he shared a Grammy Award for the recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Van Cliburn and the Symphony of the Air Orchestra. He received two Stalin Prizes for conducting opera productions, the Glinka State Prize of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and the title People's Artist of the USSR. In 1974 he received the Gustav Mahler Society’s Gold Medal for promoting Mahler’s music.

In 1978 Kondrashin became principal guest conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He was due to take up the post of chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1981, but died of a heart attack in Amsterdam on March 7 that year. His book On the Art of Conducting, which discusses his ideas and working methods, was published in 1970. An international competition for young conductors bearing his name has been held in Amsterdam since 1984.

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