Tugan Sokhiev rose among the foremost conductors during the 2010s, assuming leadership roles at the Bolshoi Theater and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in France while appearing as a guest with numerous leading symphonic ensembles worldwide.
Born on October 10, 1977, in Vladikavkaz, Ossetia—then part of the Soviet Union and now within Russia—he began piano studies at age seven. Exposure to Anatoli Briskin, conductor of the North Ossetia State Philharmonic Orchestra, prompted him to pursue conducting instead. At the St. Petersburg Conservatory he studied under the renowned Ilya Musin, one of the teacher’s final pupils. His first podium appearance came in 1999 with a production of Puccini’s La bohème in Iceland; he soon led Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Those performances led Welsh National Opera to appoint him music director in 2003, a post he left the next year amid disputes with the musicians. Recovery followed quickly: in 2005 he became principal guest conductor of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, advancing to music director in 2008. He continues in that capacity, expanding the ensemble’s programming beyond its customary French emphasis. His first recordings with the orchestra, issued on the Naïve label in 2006, included Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
Between 2010 and 2016 Sokhiev served as principal conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, relinquishing the position to concentrate on his appointment as music director of the Bolshoi Theater in 2014. He remained at the Bolshoi until 2022 and undertook increasingly prominent guest engagements with the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, and the Berlin Philharmonic—the latter on two separate multi-city tours. In 2016 he joined Sony Classical and recorded several projects with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and he transferred to Warner Classics in 2020 for a recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65. Two years later they returned to document Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, and Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, with pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja.
