Siberian Symphony Orchestra

Siberian Symphony Orchestra (Omsk) was established in 1966 by Semen Kogan, its first artistic director and chief conductor. His successor, Victor Tiz, was leading the orchestra up to 1986. In 1984 Siberian Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Victor Tiz won the first prize at the All-Russian Contest of symphonic orchestras. From 1992 to 2004 Evgeny Shestakov was the Orchestra's artistic director and chief conductor. In 1996 the honorary title "Academic" was conferred on the Orchestra for its considerable service in favor of music.

Since 2005 Evgeny Samoilov is the artistic director of the Orchestra, and Dmitry Vasiliev is the chief conductor. The Orchestra toured to many cities of Russia and visited every republic of the former USSR. With great success the Orchestra toured to Italy in 1994, playing Beethoven (Symphony #9) and Verdi (Requiem). In 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 the Orchestra visited Spain having received the warmest reception of Spanish audience.

In the 1995/1996 season the Orchestra performed twice under Mstislav Rostropovich. Siberian Symphony Orchestra hosted a kaleidoscope of prominent Russian and foreign conductors and performers. They came from the USA, Brazil, Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Poland, Yugoslavia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea, and everyone always marked out the high professional level of the Omsk Orchestra. Nikolay Petrov (piano), Boris Berezovsky (piano), Sergey Stadler (violin), Viktor Tretyakov (violin), Denis Matsuev (piano), Peter Donohoe (piano, England), Dora Schwartzberg (violin, Austria), Vadim Repin (violin), Alexander Melnikov (piano), Mikhail Pletnev (conductor, piano), Julian Gallant (conductor, England), Robert Trory (conductor, England), Dmitry Hvorostovsky (barytone, Russia) - all these world-known masters were the guests the Orchestra.

The Orchestra's string group was educated according to the finest traditions of the famous Russian string school; it is distinguished by some excellent intonation, beautiful sound, and expressiveness, both in pianissimo and in powerful fortissimo. The brass and the percussion groups are also of the highest class. The Orchestra's repertoire includes music of three centuries from the XVIII to XXI. Classical balance of Viennese symphonies, emotion of romantic scores, intricate collisions of contemporary music, inimitable looks of various national composers' schools - everything of these and lots of other music are performed by the Orchestra in high professional artistic level. There is a large amount of the Orchestra's audio and video recordings.