Pavel Kogan is a Soviet and Russian violinist and conductor, born on June 6, 1952 in Moscow, USSR. He was born into a musical Jewish family: his parents were the violinists Leonid Kogan and Elizaveta Gilels, and his uncle was the pianist Emil Gilels. From a very early age, his artistic development followed two paths, violin and conducting.
He received special permission to study both specialties simultaneously at the Moscow Conservatory, something rare in the Soviet Union. In 1970, at the age of eighteen, Kogan, then a student of Yuri Yankelevich in violin, won first prize at the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki. From that moment he began an active concert career both in his homeland and abroad. In 2010, when a judging panel was asked by the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat to choose the greatest winner in the history of the competition, Pavel Kogan was selected unanimously.
Kogan made his conducting debut in 1972 with the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra. A student of Ilya Musin and Lev Ginzburg in conducting, he later appeared with the leading Soviet orchestras both at home and on foreign tours, at the invitation of such conductors as Yevgeny Mravinsky, Kirill Kondrashin, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Veronika Dudarova, and Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
The Bolshoi Theatre opened its 1988-1989 season with Verdi's La Traviata in Pavel Kogan's production, and in the same year he became head of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1989 until April 2022 he served as artistic director and chief conductor of the Moscow State Academic Symphony Orchestra. From 1998 to 2005, alongside his work in Moscow, he was principal guest conductor of the Utah Symphony Orchestra in Salt Lake City, United States.
Throughout his career he has performed on all five continents with major orchestras, including the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of the Munich, Helsinki, Luxembourg, and Los Angeles philharmonics, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Spanish Radio and Television Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the National Orchestra of France, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse.
Kogan has made numerous recordings with the Moscow State Academic Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles. His Rachmaninoff cycle, including Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, and 3, The Isle of the Dead, Vocalise, and Scherzo, was described by Gramophone as "captivating, true Rachmaninoff... vivid, trembling and thrilling." He received the State Prize of the Russian Federation for performances of all of Mahler's symphonies and vocal-symphonic works.
He was named People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 1994 and is a full member of the Russian Academy of Arts. His distinctions include the State Prize of the Russian Federation, the Order of Friendship, the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" in the fourth and third classes, the Order of Honour, the Lithuanian Order of Grand Duke Gediminas, the Order of Saint Blessed Prince Daniel of Moscow, and the French Order of Arts and Letters.
On February 6, 2012, Kogan was officially registered as a trusted representative of presidential candidate and then prime minister Vladimir Putin. On April 25, 2022, it was reported that he had decided to leave his post as artistic director and chief conductor of the Moscow State Academic Symphony Orchestra, having submitted his resignation voluntarily. The ministry also stated that he had previously canceled all concerts scheduled from February 24, 2022, the first day of the war in Ukraine.
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