Maestro's Corner

Dmitry Sitkovetsky
Music Director

Dmitry Sitkovetsky is one of a rare breed of artist whose career successfully manifests itself in many artistic fields. As a violinist, he has worked with the very best orchestras in the world - the Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, Philharmonia, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York Philharmonic and Cleveland orchestras. He has also performed at the Salzburg Festival and at the Lucerne, Edinburgh, Verbier, Istanbul and Georges Enescu festivals, as well as being a founding artist of the Tuscan Sun Festival since 2003.

Over the past few years, Sitkovetsky has built a flourishing conducting career. He was the Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Ulster Orchestra and has worked with London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle and Milwaukee symphonies, Santa Cecilia & Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. Sitkovetsky is also the founding director of the New European Strings (NES) Chamber Orchestra which is comprised of distinguished string players from the East and West. Since 2003, Sitkovetsky has been the Music Director of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and the Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian State Orchestra. In March, 2006, he was named Artist-in-Residence of the Orchestre de Castilla & Leon in Spain which will involve conducting the orchestra on tours, playing as a soloist and in chamber music, as well as giving masterclasses.

Since his successful transcription of Bach´s Goldberg Variations for string trio 20 years ago, he has transcribed works by Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Dohnanyi, Bartok, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Schnittke, mostly for string orchestra. He has been a member of ASCAP since 1985, and his transcriptions are published by Doblinger, Sikorski and Schirmer's.
He has an active and varied recording career with an extensive discography which includes all the major violin concerti, numerous chamber music works, as well as orchestral recordings as conductor. In the spring, 2005, a new CD with his transcriptions for string orchestra of works by Shostakovich and Stravinsky was released by Edition Hänssler with the NES CO and Sitkovetsky. Later this season, Hänssler released a recording of Trios by Shostakovich and Mieczyslaw Weinberg with David Geringas and Jasha Nemtsov. In the fall of 2006, the first recording of a Complete Mozart Violin Sonatas with Antonio Pappano should be released. 
His CD’s of the last few years - works for violin and piano by Rodion Shchedrin, with the composer playing the piano, - reflects Sitkovetsky's increasing involvement with contemporary composers. He premiered the violin concerti written for him by John Casken (1995), and Krzystof Meyer (2000), and often performs works by Dutilleux, Penderecki, Schnittke, Pärt, Vasks and Shchedrin who has written several works for Sitkovetsky both as violinist and conductor. In the summer of 2005, he performed two major works by John Corigliano - his Second Symphony and the Red Violin Suite where he was both the violinist and the conductor.
Highlights of the 2006-07 season include conducting the Royal Philharmonic, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Orchestre National de Lille, the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra.  Concerto engagements include the Concertgebouw, Cincinnati Orchestra and the Berlin Komische Oper.
In May, 2007, Dmitry Sitkovetsky will be the Artist-in-Residence of the Bodensee Festival in Germany which will see him as a soloist with the SWR Orchestra (S. Cambreling, conductor), conducting the Sudwestdeutche Philarmonie (Gary Hoffman, soloist), playing the trio-concerto with Gary Hoffman & Konstantin Lifshitz, solo-recitals (Bach), as well as giving a Masterclass, and having his NES Chamber Orchestra in residence for three different programs.

Dmitry Sitkovetsky was born in Baku/Azerbaijan, but grew up in Moscow where he studied at the Moscow Conservatory and, after his emigration in 1977, at the Juilliard School in New York. Since 1987, he has been living in London with his wife, Susan, and their daughter, Julia.