| Constantine Orbelian, Guest Conductor, was born in San Francisco, USA, in 1956. He studied piano at the Children Division of the SF Conservatory of Music with Claire James. He made his debut at the age of 11 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. He studied piano at the Central Music School of Moscow under the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatoire with Anaida Sumbatian. Between 1975 and 1980, he studied at Julliard. Between 1980 and 1991, Constantine Orbelian performed as a pianist over 750 concerts worldwide: in North and South Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He performed with the most prestigious orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra to mention but a few, and worked with prominent conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Vasily Sinaisky, Alexander Dmitriev and Vladimir Spivakov. In 1991–2009, he was artistic director and conductor of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra (now the State Academic Chamber Orchestra of Russia). With Orbelian at the helm the orchestra gave more than 140 concerts annually, over 80 of them given abroad on the world’s leading stages: Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Salle Pleyel in Paris, Carnegie Hall in New York, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and many others. Under Constantine Orbelian’s baton the chamber orchestra recorded compositions of different styles and genres, including Paganini’s violin concertos with Ilya Grubert (violin), Arutyunyan’s compositions performed by his daughter, Narina Arutyunyan (piano) and Ilya Grubert, Prokofiev’s orchestral pieces, compositions for trumpet by Weinberg, Arutyunyan and Pakhmutova with Bibi Black (trumpet), Rossini’s overtures, complete piano compositions by Mendelssohn with Jean Louis Steuerman (piano), Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Shostakovich’s waltzes written for films and ballet suits, compositions by Schnitke and by Shostakovich, and Rachmaninov’s opera Aleko. Since 2010, Constantine Orbelyan has led the Moscow Chamber Orchestra of the Pavel Slobodkin Theatre and Concert Centre. Since 2013, he has been a general producer, guest music director and conductor of the “Tsaritsyno Opera” Volgograd State Theatre. Constantine Orbelian is the founder and music director of two Russian festivals. Since 1991, the St. Petersburg Palaces festival of chamber music has annually gathered international musicians and chamber singers to perform in St. Petersburg palaces and their vicinity. In 1996, the first “Music Gems in the Kremlin Museums” concert, also led by Orbelian, took place in the Armoury Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin. The musician is a guest conductor and a member the Board of Trustees of the Russian-American Youth Orchestra; he also teaches Russian music history at Stanford University, USA. The Opera Classic magazine has called Constantine Orbelian the best vocal conductor of our time.
| Dmitri Hvorostovsky has recorded a new CD in collaboration with the Novaya Opera Theatre orchestra, conducted by Maestro Constantine Orbelyan… Learn more… |
