Evgeny Svetlanov

Yevgeny Feodorovich Svetlanov ranked among the foremost Russian conductors of the twentieth century. Born into a household steeped in the performing arts, he counted a Bolshoi Theater soloist as his father and a mime-theater performer as his mother. He completed his training at the Gnesin Institute in 1951, where Mikhail Gnesin guided his composition studies and Mariya Gurvich oversaw his piano work; afterward he pursued further instruction at the Moscow Conservatory under Yury Shaporin in composition and Alexander Gauk in conducting.

Even before graduation, Svetlanov led performances for All-Union Radio in 1953 and made his debut with the State Symphony Orchestra the following year. He joined the Bolshoi Theater as assistant conductor in 1955 and rose to principal conductor in 1962. Audiences there prized the vivid, invigorating sonorities he brought to Russian opera, above all the works of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. Under his direction the company made its landmark appearance at La Scala in Milan.

Svetlanov assumed leadership of the U.S.S.R. State Symphony Orchestra—later renamed the Russian State Symphony Orchestra—in 1965 and held the post until his retirement in 1999. That long association anchored both his podium activity and his extensive discography. He launched an ambitious project to record the principal orchestral output of Russian composers spanning more than a century, from Glinka through Myaskovsky. He also documented works by later figures including Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Shchedrin, Knipper, Shebalin, Khachaturian, and Eshpaî. Soviet authorities recognized his contributions with several honors: People’s Artist of the U.S.S.R. in 1968, the Lenin Prize in 1975, and the Glinka Prize the same year. In 1979 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and maintained regular collaborations with the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague as well as major ensembles in Japan, France, and Sweden. On the occasion of Svetlanov’s seventieth birthday in 1998, President Boris Yeltsin bestowed national distinctions. After the conductor’s death, the English critic David Wilkins described him as “an essential champion of the soul of Russian music.”

Svetlanov himself composed orchestral, chamber, and vocal scores, among them a piano concerto. He was married to the Russian soprano Larisa Avdeyeva. His career furnished the subject of the Soviet biographical film Dirizhor (The Conductor).