Vladimir Ziva

Conductor

Born: 1957 - Russia

The Russian conductor, Vladimir Ziva, graduated with honors from two oldest conservatories of the country: Leningrad Conservatory (professor E. Kudryavtsev's class) and Moscow Conservatory (professor Dmitri Kitaenko's class).

In 1984-1987 Vladimir Ziva worked as assistant-conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. From 1986 to 1989 he was a professor at the orchestra department (faculty) of the Moscow Conservatory. From June 1988 he leads the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Nizhny Novogorod Philharmonic, where he directed Sakharov's Festivals. From 1990 to 1992 he also was the chief conductor of the Mousorgsky Opera and Ballet Theatre in St. Petersburg. Since 1997 he is the chief conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and since 2000 also artistic director.

At Svatoslav Rikhter's invitation, Vladimir Ziva arranged some opera and music stage plays at the Festival "December Nights" (Britten's Albert Herring and The Turn of the Screw, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Snow-Maiden, Bach's The Contest Between Phoebus and Pan BWV 201), in co-operation with B. Pokrovsky he staged A. Kholminov's opera Brothers Karamazov at the Moscow Chamber Music Theater, Britten's Song, on the water (Wild with passion) and L. Desyatnikov's Poor Liza at Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic, Prokofiev's Cinderella at Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater, M. Landovsky's opera Madman, Bordin's opera Prince Igor at the Saint-Petersburg Opera and Ballet Theater named after Musorgsky.

With the Moscow Conservatory Orchestra Vladimir Ziva participated in the joint Soviet-French stage of Debussy's opera Pelleas et Melisande, in the Festival of Soviet music in the USA, he often performed with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chamber Theater abroad, as well as participated in concerts at the Contemporary Music Festivals "Moscow Autumn", "Leningrad Spring".

Vladimir Ziva's He is known as both symphonic and opera conductor. He gives about 50 symphonic concerts per year. His repertoire embraces 13 operas, over 500 compositions of various epochs, trends, national schools. He has conducted premieres of more than 70 compositions of Russian and foreign composers. Operas conducted by V.Ziva are various as well: classic shows as Eugene Onegin and Snow-Maiden of P. Tchaikovsky, Thais of Massenet (in the Moscow Musical Theatre Stanislavsky and Nimerovich-Danchenko) go together with modern operas such as those of Britten The Turn of the Screw and Albert Herring (on the invitation of S.Richter for the Festival "the Soirees of December"), Life with an Idiot by Alfred Shnitke and the Brothers Karamazov by A. Kholminov (at Moscow Chamber Music Theatre of B. Pokrovsky). He has led many tours both in Russia and abroad with the best Russian and Western orchestras. He toured in the USA, Cuba, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, France (Cannes, with the orchestra of the St. Petersburg Maly Opera Theatre Mussorgsky), Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Greece, and has given over 800 concerts including 250 in foreign countries. Ziva played with outstanding musicians including as M. Rostropovich, Gutman, Gidon Kremer, Tretyakov, Y. Bachmet, D. Bachkirov, Mischa Maisky, A. Kniazev, M. Voskresensky, E. Virsaladze, and many others. He made discs of about 20 concerts with classic and modern musical compositions.

Vladimir Ziva's artistic achievements have been widely recognized in Russia, where he was honored as the laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1995) and the "Honoured Artist of Russia".