Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra
Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra has been well-known outside Siberia for a very long time. It has become a cultural wealth of not only the city of Novosibirsk and the Siberian region but of the whole of Russia. According to some foreign critic’s assessment, the orchestra can be ‘rated at the same level as the orchestras of Moscow and St. Petersburg and can successfully compete with many European orchestras’. During its 50-years history the musical group, set up in 1956 and headed ever since by the People’s Artist of the USSR, laureate of the National Award of Russia, professor Arnold Kats, has toured big and small cities of Russia and participated in numerous international musical festivals: ‘White Nights’, ‘Russian Winter’, Festival ‘Ear’ (Erlangen, Germany, 1999), Piano Festival (France, 1995, 1996), Classic music Festival in Cannes (France, 1996) and many others. The orchestra has toured Bulgaria, Italy, Finland, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Japan
The Orchestra have played more than five thousand concerts, with programmes ranging from Bach and pre-Bach period to the present days. The artistic motto of the orchestra and maestro Kats is ‘classics and today’. The same name bears the annual festival organized by the orchestra under Arnold Kats’s leadership. The orchestra has been conducted by many world-renown Russian conductors, such as Kirill Kondrashin, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Mariss Jansons, Dmitry Kitaenko, Valery Gergiev, Alexander Lazarev. Among the musicians who have appeared in orchestra’s concert were Svyatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Igor Oistrakh, Dmitry Bashkirov, Mstislav Rostropovich, Nikolai Petrov, Mikhail Pletnev, Natalia Gutman, Oleg Kagan, Yuri Bashmet, Viktor Tretyakov, Vladimir Spivakov, Grigory Sokolov, Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Bella Davidovich, Dmitry Sitkovetsky etc. Since 2002 the principal guest conductor is Thomas Sanderling. The orchestra has performed at such prestigious venues as the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, Great Hall of St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society, Verdi Hall of Milan Conservatory, Salle Playel in Paris, Beethoven Hall in Stuttgart, Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Schubert Saal in Vienna, National Auditorium in Madrid, Coliseo dos recrezio in Lisbon, Stravinsky Auditorium in Montreux, Royal Festival Hall in London, Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, Kitara Hall in Sapporo and many others. The recordings of the orchestra are released by Sony Classical, ‘Arte Nova’, ‘Russian Seasons’ etc.
