Vladimir Tarnopolsky

Vladimir Tarnopolsky is a Russian composer, born on April 30, 1955, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR. In 1973 he moved to Moscow and studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he learned composition with Nikolai Sidelnikov, instrumentation with Edison Denisov, and music theory with Yuri Kholopov. His graduation work, a concerto for cello and orchestra completed in 1980, was premiered in 1982 by Gennady Rozhdestvensky. In 1987 he continued his studies in Parczew, Poland, with Luigi Nono.

From 1981 he taught at the Moscow Music Pedagogical Institute named after M. M. Ippolitov-Ivanov. In the years of perestroika he became one of the reformers of post-Soviet musical life and was among the initiators of the reestablished Association for Contemporary Music in 1989, known as ACM-2, which took its name from the avant-garde composers' association active in the 1920s and dissolved in 1931.

In 1992 Tarnopolsky moved to the Moscow Conservatory, where he taught as professor of composition until 2022. There he founded the Center for Contemporary Music and the Studio for New Music Ensemble in 1993, and in 1994 he launched the international festival Moscow Forum. On his initiative, an independent department for contemporary music was created at the conservatory. Among his students in Moscow were Alexandra Filonenko, Jamilya Jazylbekova, and Felix Profos.

In April 2022 he moved to Germany, where he was able to take up a visiting professorship at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. Since 2025 he has been a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

Tarnopolsky's output includes operas, orchestral music, chamber music, and vocal music. One of his central works is the opera When Time Overflows Its Banks, premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1999 and described in a review as a shimmering sonic chameleon through time. In contrast to postmodern polystylism, Tarnopolsky has said that he aims for a meta-style, a fusion of all possible styles, a music he describes as aural magma or dissonant euphony. His works also contain theatrical, ironic, grotesque, and surreal elements.

Since the 1980s his compositions have been performed internationally at festivals and events including the Holland Festival, Klangspuren, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Venice Biennale, World New Music Days, the Munich Biennale, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Berlin Festival Weeks, the Warsaw Autumn, Beethovenfest Bonn, and Wien Modern. His music has been supported and interpreted by figures such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Ingo Metzmacher, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Jurowski, Sylvain Cambreling, Alexander Lazarev, Vassily Sinaisky, Natalia Gutman, Yuri Bashmet, Reinbert de Leeuw, and Valery Gergiev.

His honors include the Dmitri Shostakovich Prize and the Paul Hindemith Prize in 1991, the International Rostrum of Composers in 2001, a guest lectureship at the Darmstadt Summer Course in 2010, membership in the Saxon Academy of Arts in 2010, a residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2015, a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin in 2017 and 2018, the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Foundation Prize in 2023, and the Dominante Prize in 2025.

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