Tugan Sokhiev
Internationally renowned conductor Tugan Sokhiev shares his time between symphony and opera. He was the Musical Director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse (ONCT) from 2008 to 2022, and of the prestigious Bolshoi Theater in Moscow from 2014 to 2022.
Appointed Music Director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in 2008, he has headed several successful concert seasons, including world premieres and a significant number of tours abroad, which have propelled the orchestra to international prominence.
Since 2014, he has also been the Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. He is passionate about his work with singers, and has conducted many operas. He has been invited to the New York Metropolitan Opera (with the Mariinsky), and the Houston Grand Opera, where his interpretation of Boris Godunov was widely acclaimed. His Amour des trois oranges at the Aix-en-Provence festival in 2004 was crowned with success, and was afterwards performed at the Théâtre de la Ville in Luxemburg, and at the Teatro Real in Madrid.
Being one of the last students of legendary teacher Ilya Musin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tugan Sokhiev is eager to share his expertise, and thus has initiated a Conducting Academy in Toulouse. His interest in French-Russian relationships in classical music has led him to become Toulouse's Franco-Russian festival Artistic Director. The Bolshoi Orchestra often plays at this festival, and at the Philharmonie de Paris under his baton.
As a guest conductor, Tugan Sokhiev regularly conducts the most prominent orchestras in the world: Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestras of Vienna, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, New York, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Symphony Orchestra of the Finnish Radio, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, where he was appointed Principal Conductor between 2012 and 2017.
Tugan Sokhiev has a rich and varied discography, including recordings with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse on Naïve Classique (Tchaikovsky's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, Mussorgsky/Ravel's Pictures at an Exhibition, Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and The Firebird), and on Warner Classics (Shostakovitch Eighth Symphony). His recordings of Prokofiev's Ivan the Terrible, Fifth Symphony, and Scythian Suite with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester have been released on Sony Classical. He collaborated with EuroArts on a series of DVDs, the first of which – A Flight through the Orchestra – features his interpretation of Brahms' Second Symphony with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester. Under the same label, he appears with the Capitole de Toulouse in a recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Vadim Gluzman, Bartok's The Wooden Prince, and Brahms' First Symphony (2017), and with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in works by Ravel and Prokofiev (Waldbühne, 2019).
The 2021/2022 season included engagements with the Orchestra of La Scala, Milan, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Staatskappelle at the Salzburg Easter Festival, and the Munich, Berlin, and New York Philharmonic Orchestras. In October 2021, he led the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on their tour of Russia, Korea, and Japan.