Vladimir Genin is a Russian-German composer, pianist, and music educator. He was born in Moscow in 1958 into a family with close ties to the arts. His grandfather, Joseph Spinel, was a professor at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography and a production designer on more than 60 films. His father, Mikhail Genin, was a satirical writer whose aphorisms were translated into German.
Genin graduated with honors from the music college at the Moscow Conservatory in 1977, where he studied piano with Viktor Bunin. He then studied for a year at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute with piano teacher Alisa Kezeradze. In 1983 he graduated with honors from the Moscow Conservatory, having studied composition with Roman Ledenev, orchestration with Yuri Butsko, and piano with Ilya Klyachko. Composer Georgy Sviridov became an important influence and a longtime friend. Genin completed postgraduate studies at the conservatory in 1991.
Genin writes chamber, choral, and symphonic music that has been performed in Russia, Europe, and the United States. His works have been published by Soviet Composer and German publishers including Sikorski, Ries & Erler, Neue Musik, Wolfgang Haas Classic, and Enter Media Publishing. They have appeared at festivals including Moscow Autumn, the International Rostrum of Composers in Belgrade, the International Choral Music Festival in Gori, and Musikfest of the Munich Society for New Music.
Among his early works, the 1987 choral piece Lament for Andrei Bogolyubsky, Grand Prince of Vladimir received more than 70 performances in Russia. In 1989 it was performed at the Moscow Conservatory and on a tour of the western United States by the Vladimir Chamber Choir. Melodiya released it on vinyl and CD in 1990, and it was reissued by Europe RCD in 1996. Genin also arranged Mussorgsky's vocal cycles Songs and Dances of Death and Without Sunlight for Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who performed them with orchestras led by Valery Gergiev and Yevgeny Kolobov.
His other works include the operas Alcestis and Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes, both set to texts by Rainer Maria Rilke; the chamber concertos Pietà and his accordion concerto; Seven Melodies for the Dial for piano; and Flowers of Evil, a song-and-dance cycle inspired by Charles Baudelaire. His score for the 2002 German film The Cosmonaut's Letter was released on DVD, and a suite from the score was performed in Munich. In 2023, his operas based on Rilke's texts were premiered at the Pierre Boulez Hall in Berlin. His accordion concerto was performed at the Berlin Philharmonic in 2024.
As a pianist, Genin has performed solo and in chamber ensembles in Russia, Germany, England, and Italy. He gave a concert of his own music in Vladimir in 2012, performing the piano part in his Diptych for Piano and Orchestra with the Vladimir Governor's Symphony Orchestra. Since 1997 he has lived in Munich, where he teaches piano, composition, and orchestration in his studio. He has taught at the Austrian Master Classes since 2012, directs the music school in Hallbergmoos, near Munich, and serves as artistic director of the erstKlassiK concert series.