Vladimir Fedoseyev

Vladimir Fedoseyev

b. 1932 (St. Petersburg)

Vladimir Ivanovich Fedoseyev (born 5 August 1932) is a Soviet and Russian conductor, bayan player, and teacher. He has been the artistic director and chief conductor of the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, formerly the Grand Symphony Orchestra of All-Union Radio and Central Television, since 1974.

From 1948 to 1952, Fedoseyev studied bayan at the Mussorgsky Leningrad Music College. He then attended the Gnesins Moscow Music and Pedagogical Institute, studying bayan with Nikolai Chaykin and conducting with Nikolai Reznikov. After graduating in 1957, he joined the Orchestra of Russian Folk Instruments of Central Television and All-Union Radio as a bayan player; from 1959 to 1973, he served as its artistic director and chief conductor.

Fedoseyev began his symphonic conducting career with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, appearing with it in 1971 at Yevgeny Mravinsky's invitation. That year he completed postgraduate studies in opera and symphonic conducting at the Moscow Conservatory under Lev Ginzburg. He has conducted leading orchestras internationally, including the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Gewandhaus Orchestra, French Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Essen Philharmonic.

As an opera conductor, he has led Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at the Bolshoi Theatre and Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride at the Kirov Leningrad Theatre of Opera and Ballet, now the Mariinsky Theatre. His productions have included Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and The Sleeping Beauty at La Scala; Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; Bizet's Carmen, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin at the Vienna State Opera; and Massenet's Cléopâtre at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. He was also music director for the Bolshoi Theatre's 2015 production of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, directed by Sergei Zhenovach.

Fedoseyev was chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 2005. Since 1997 he has been a permanent guest conductor at the Zurich Opera House, and since 2000 he has served as chief guest conductor of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2017 he became music director and chief guest conductor of Helikon Opera in Moscow. Since 2004 he has taught opera and symphonic conducting at the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music, where he is a professor, and he has given masterclasses at the Vienna Conservatory.

He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1980 and received the Glinka State Prize of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1970 for concert programmes of 1967–1969, followed by the USSR State Prize in 1989 for concert programmes of 1986–1988. His distinctions also include the Russian Government Prize in Culture, the Golden Mask special prize for outstanding contribution to theatrical art, the Ovation National Russian Music Prize, the European Trebbia Award, and the Golden Medal of the International Gustav Mahler Society. Asteroid 7741 Fedoseev, discovered in 1983 by Lyudmila Karachkina, was named in his honour following a proposal by Georgy Sviridov.

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