29th INTERNATIONAL MASTERCLASS
IN ORCHESTRAL CONDUCTING
with Maestro ALEXANDER POLYANICHKO
(Mariinsky Theatre)
and St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra
January 2-8, 2011
Repertoire to be studied:
F.J. Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 44, 43, 104
W.A Mozart: Symphony Nos. 29, 40 (also 39, 41), Overtures to "Don Giovanni" and "Magic Flute", "Le Nozze di Figaro", "Eine kleine Nachtmusik"
L. van Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1-8, Overtures "Careolan" and "Egmond"
J. Brahms: Symphonies 1-4
F. Schubert: Symphony No. 5 D.485D, Symphony No. 8 "Unfinished"
N. Rimsky-Korsakov: "Sheherazade", "Easter" Overture
P.I. Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 4, 5 & 6,
"Serenade for strings", “Romeo and Juliet” Overture-Fantasia,
"Swan Lake" Suite Op. 20
plus the choice among the following:
S. Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1 "Classical"
D. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5
I. Stravinsky: Symphony in three movements, Apollon Musagete
J. Strauss: "The Bat" Overture, Op. 362
Other choice of repertoire is possible (subject to the confirmation by the Maestro and the orchestra)
Preliminary Workshop Schedule:
DAY 1 & 2 - Piano Session
DAY 3 & 4 - Chamber Orchestra
DAY 5 & 6 - Symphony Orchestra
DAY 7 - Dress Reheasal and Final public concert
All active participants will conduct at the Final (public) Concert.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
1) This workshop is open to conductors at all levels of proficiency, from beginners to professionals. There is no age limit. The official language is ENGLISH.
2) Participants will work with the orchestra for four days. Each participant will conduct the orchestra every day for at least 30 minutes (total 2 hrs on the podium, plus the dress rehearsal and the concert).
3) Accommodation at a hotel or a private apartment at a reasonable price (usually around €40 per day) can be arranged on your behalf.
4) Assistance with Visa issuance (i.e. Invitation Letter) for Russia is available at no additional cost (required for most nationals). You can download the Visa Assistance Form from this website.
5) All sessions can be videotaped (please bring your own cameras and DV tapes).
6) Final concert will be videotaped - the performance DVD will be sent to each participant free of charge (i.e. included in the price of the masterclass)
7) Please note that, if you are to bring a musical instrument and/or bow into Russia, you may need to declare it with the customs, as well as give a photo of your instrument.
Active Participant Fee - €1,800 (approx. US$2,400)
Auditors (Passive Participants) - €650 (approx. US$975)
Deadline for Applications: November 15, 2010
The Workshop Fee covers all masterclass sessions.
A Certificate of Completion will be issued to each participant after the final concert.
Places are limited - please inquire today.
About the Faculty:
Maestro ALEXANDER POLIANICHKO (POLYANICHKO)
Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia; Conductor; The Honored Artist of Russia
A violinist in the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, Alexander Polianichko studied conducting with the legendary Professor Ilya Musin at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. In 1988, he was awarded first prize in the Sixth All-Union Conductor's Competition (previous first prize winners had included names such as Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yury Temirkanov) and the following year joined the Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre. Alexander was the Opera Director of the Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre between 1995 and 1996, and he still conducts at the Mariinsky on a regular basis.
He has conducted the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet Theatre in Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, Monaco, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United States.
His opera's repertoire ranges from Verdi and Puccini to the major operas of Tchaikovsky and Musorgsky and works by Janá?ek and Shostakovich.
He has worked with major opera companies throughout the world, including the Bolshoi Theatre (La Bohème, Tosca, The Queen of Spades, Eugene Onegin, The Maid of Pskov), Danish Royal Opera (The Queen of Spades, The Love for Three Oranges, The Markopoulos Case with director Graham Vick), Deutsche Oper Berlin (La Traviata), English National Opera (Eugene Onegin, Carmen), Gothenburg Opera (The Queen of Spades, Boris Godunov), La Scala (Khovanschina), Nationale Reisopera of The Nederlands (Madama Butterfly), Norwegian Opera (La Bohème, Madama Butterfly), Opera Australia (Carmen, Manon Lescaut), Opéra de Monte Carlo (Boris Godunov), Opera National de Paris (Mavra, The Prodigal Son, Seven Deadly Sins with Anne Sofie von Otter), Opera New Zealand (Eugene Onegin), Royal Opera Covent Garden (Queen of Spades with Placido Domingo and Cherevichki/Tsarina's Slippers with director Francesca Zambello), San Francisco Opera (Fiery Angel, Turandot, La Bohème, The Cunning Little Vixen), Stuttgart Opera (The Queen of Spades, Lady Macbeth of Mstensk, Tosca, Boris Godunov with Pata Burchuladze, Turandot, La Traviata) and Welsh National Opera (La Traviata, Hansel und Gretel, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Mazeppa - won the Theatrical Awards TMA of 2006 for best opera production).
He has worked with many world famous vocalists including Olga Borodina, Irina Bogacheva, Larissa Diadkova, Olga Guryakova, Makvala Kasrashvili, Anna Netrebko, Elena Obraztsova, Anne Sofie von Otter, Larissa Shevchenko, Dawn Upshaw, Sergey Aleksashkin, Sir Thomas Allen, Pata Burchuladze, Misha Didyk, Plasido Domingo, Vladimir Galuzin, Sergey Leiferkus, Frank Lopardo, Vladimir Matorin, Vladimir Ognovenko, Nikolai Okhotnikov, Konstantin Pluzhnikov, Nikolai Putilin, Alexey Steblyanko and John Tomlinson.
He has conducted an extensive ballet repertoire from classics of the Russian Nineteenth Century School, via the masterpieces of Fokin and Balanchine, to contemporary choreography including works by Noymaier. In 1996, he took the Opéra National de Paris to New York to perform Rudolf Nureev's La Bayadera at the Metropolitan Opera House. In 2001, he conduted Swan Lake for the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden. In 2009, he was invited by Mats Ek to conduct Sleeping Beauty in Gothenburg.
Alexander Polianichko is also a distinguished symphonic conductor. He has toured New Zealand with the Wellington Symphony Orchestra and Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Brisbane Symphony Orchestra. In the UK, he conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales (soloist Boris Berezovsky), English Chamber Orchestra (soloist Misha Maiski), Royal Scottish National Orchestra (soloist Jean-Yves Tibaude), London Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (soloist Nikolay Demidenko), The Orchestra of Opera North, the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and Hallé Orchestra.
Elsewhere, he has worked with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Beethoven Academie of Antwerp, Calgary Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Radio Orchestra, Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Jenaer Philharmonie, Latvian State Symphony Orchestra, Norway Radio Orchestra (soloist Vilde Frang), Odense Symphony Orchestra (soloist Eldar Nebolsin), Orchestra Opera de Lyon, Orchestra of Gothenburg Opera, Orchestra of Danish Royal Opera House, Oregon Symphony (soloist Ignat Solzhenitsyn), Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia, and State Symphony Orchestra of Byelorussia as well as the major orchestras in Russia, including Sverdlovsk and Novosibirsk Symphony Orchestras, Russian National Orchestra and St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestras.
From 1986 to 1989, Alexander Polianichko was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Belorussian State Chamber Orchestra in Minsk, with which he toured and recorded extensively. From 1997 to 2000, he was Chief Conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta.
Alexander Polianichko was a member of Jury at the Rimsky-Korsakov Opera Singers' Competition and has taken part in many international festivals such as Savonlinna and Mikkele (Finland), Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Aldeburgh (UK), and Bergen (Norway). In Russia, he participated in many major festivals, among them the Shaliapin Festival (Kazan), White Night's Festival (St Petersburg), and Golden Mask Festival (Moscow).
Teaching has always been one of Alexander Polianichko's interests. From 1985 to 1989, he taught conducting at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and the Minsk Conservatory. From 2005 to 2007, he worked in United Kingdom with the Symphony Orchestra of Royal College of Music (London), Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra (Cambridge) and the Britten-Pears Orchestra (Aldeburg) teaching young musicians the subtleties of orchestral playing. In March 2010, he was invited to work with the orchestra of the Swedish National Orchestra Academy.
Since 2001 he has regularly given master-classes in St. Petersburg for conductors organized by the Royal Baltic Festival and the Hermitage Music Academy.
He participated in TV recordings and live radio in different countries, and in the DVD recordings of the concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2008) and new production of Tchaikovsky's opera Cherevichki with The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (2009). In the summer of 2010, he was the music director of the new production of the Bolshoi Theatre, the opera Rimsky-Korsakov's Maid of Pskov (with director Yury Laptev), which was held in the Pskov's Kremlin walls.
Click here to view the video from one of Maestro Polyanichko's Masterclasses.
About the Orchestra:
ST. PETERSBURG STATE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The Saint Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1967 under the directorship of Nikolai Rabinovich and has had many outstanding conductors from the St Petersburg school involved from its foundation such as Karl Eliasberg and Edward Grikurov. They set a very high musical standard which was then strengthened by their conducting students of the next generation - Yuri Temirkanov, Mariss Jansons, Y. Simonov, E. Serov, E Kolobov, R Martynov and others. The orchestra has undergone much change since its inception including a change of name and leadership but through all this time it has been developing its repertoire strengths and building a devoted audience. In 1996, the orchestra was given the honorary title of an Academic Orchestra.
The orchestra’s repertoire is extremely diverse ranging from the Baroque music of Handel and Vivaldi right through to music of the 20 th century. Since 1991, the orchestra holds their subscription series in the Mirror Hall of the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace. In addition, the orchestra often performs in the Philharmonic Hall. Apart from standard concerts, the orchestra offers many educational programmes aimed at children and young people with repertoire including the classical masterpieces, Russian repertoire and music from foreign composers.
The regular commissioning and performance of new compositions is testament to the high standard of the orchestra with many new works written especially for the orchestra. There is strong support for local composers but also collaborations with many foreign composers who have also dedicated their works to this orchestra.
The Saint Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra tours regularly all over the world and has had successful concerts in Spain, Japan, Mexico, Germany, China and Finland. In the autumn of 1998, the orchestra toured to the USA and over 2 months held close to 50 concerts in different cities from the far east to the west coasts.
Many distinguished soloists and conductors have worked with the orchestra over the years such as Sviatoslav Richter, Elena Obrastsova, Yevgeni Nesterenko, Natalia Gutman, Eliso Virsaladze, Mikhail Vaiman, Yevgeniy Mogilevsky, O. Nikole, Montserrat Kabale, Pavel Egorov and Viktor Tretyakov.
From 2004 to 2007, the orchestra appointed the young, dynamic Vasily Petrenko as the new Chief Conductor following on from Ravil Martynov. From 2007 the principal conductor of the orchestrais Maestro Alexander Titov, Honorary Artist of Russia.
For more info about the orchestra, visit www.spb-orchestra.ru.
