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Mikhail Vasilievich Pletnev (Russian:
Михаил Васильевич Плетнёв -
Mikhail Vasil'evič Pletnëv; born 14 April 1957 in Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union) is a
Russian pianist, conductor, and composer.
Biography
He was born to a very musical family; his father played and
taught accordion, his mother piano.[1] He
entered the Central School of Music at the age of 13 and, in 1974,
entered the Moscow Conservatory, under the
instruction of Yakov
Flier and Lev
Vlasenko. Aged 21, he won the Gold Medal of the VI International
Tchaikovsky Competition in 1978, which earned him international
recognition and drew great attention worldwide. The next year he
made his debut in the United States. He also taught at the Moscow
Conservatory.
In 1988, he was invited to
perform at the superpower conference in Washington, D.C. At this conference,
he met and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev. Because of this
friendship, he gained the support to found two years later the Russian National Orchestra
in 1990, the first
non-government-supported orchestra in Russia since 1917, and was its first principal conductor.[2] He
stepped down as Principal Conductor in the late 1990s, but he is
now the orchestra's artistic director.[3] Mikhail
Pletnev has been named first guest conductor of the Orchestra della Svizzera
Italiana in Lugano,
Switzerland starting September 2008.
Pletnev's recordings are mostly of Russian works, though he has
recently recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies for the
Deutsche Grammophon label. The first works he recorded were for
orchestra, including Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty,
his Pathetique Symphony
and Manfred Symphony, and
Rachmaninov's Second and Third Symphonies. All were well received
by critics. His piano repertoire is also very large, including
works like The Seasons, many
Scarlatti Sonatas, Pictures at an
Exhibition, and his own transcriptions of suites from
The
Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty.
Pletnev has been an exclusive contract pianist for Deutsche
Grammophon since 1996.
Awards
and recognitions
References
External
links
Interviews
Wikis
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