Russia's Bolshoi Conductor Tugan Sokhiev Steps Down Amidst Ongoing Conflict

He is one of the last students of legendary teacher Ilya Musin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Eager to share his expertise, Mr. Sokhiev initiated a Conducting Academy in Toulouse. His interest in classical music's French-Russian relationships led him to become artistic director of the Franco-Russian Festival in Toulouse, bringing the Bolshoi Orchestra to the festival and to the Philharmonie de Paris.

As a guest conductor, Mr. Sokhiev regularly conducts the world's most prominent ensembles including the Vienna, Berlin, and New York philharmonic orchestras; Boston, Chicago, and NHK symphony orchestras; and The Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra dell'accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, where he was principal conductor from 2012 to 2017.

In early 2021 he conducted a highly successful production of Richard Strauss's Salome at the Bolshoi Theatre (in a Metropolitan Opera co-production), where later this year he will lead a new production of Musorgsky's Khovanshchina (in co-production with the Bavarian Staatsoper). Upcoming engagements include debuts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Staatskappelle (in Dresden and at the Salzburg Easter Festival), and Munich Philharmonic, and returns to the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras and leading American orchestras. In October 2021 he will conduct Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on tour to Russia, South Korea, and Japan.

Tugan Sokhiev's rich and varied discography included recordings with the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse on Warner Classics (including Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, awarded the Diapason D'Or in 2020), and Tchaikovsky's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, Mussorgsky / Ravel's Pictures at an Exhibition, Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and The Firebird on Naïve Classique.