VLADIMIR PONKIN

“If you ask Moscow music lovers ‘who is the best conductor of today?’, many of them will answer Vladimir Ponkin!” (Moscow Kommersant Daily). In 1980 Vladimir Ponkin was the first Russian to win the Gold Medal at the ‘5th International Rupert Foundation Competition for Young Conductors’ in London. Soon after he successfully accomplished an opera production of ‘Mozart and Salieri’ by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and also took part in producing probably the best performances of the 80s of Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Rake’s Progress’ and Dimitri Shostakovich’s ‘Nose’ at the famous Moscow Chamber Opera Theatre headed by Boris Pokrovsky.

In the early 90s Vladimir Ponkin was appointed Music Director of the Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra and shortly after Krzyztof Penderezki recommended him for the same position to the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra. One of Ponkin’s greatest achievements with this orchestra was a performance of Penderezki’s monumental and extremely difficult composition ‘Jutrznia’ (Utrenia) for soloists, choir and orchestra which was prepared for a concert in Stockholm within the framework of a festival dedicated to the composer. Penderezki highly appreciated Ponkin’s skill and announced: “After this concert I have no desire at all to conduct this composition myself.”

A concert for Pope John Paul II at his Vatican residence Castelgandolfo with the Krakow Philharmonic can also be considered as an outstanding highlight. It was so successful that the Pope asked to play an encore and presented Ponkin with the ‘Medaglia Ufficiale Annuale del XVII anno di Pontificato di Sua Santita Giovanni Paolo II’. For all his work with this orchestra, Vladimir Ponkin was awarded with the order ‘For Cultural Merits’ by the Minister of Culture and Arts of Poland.

Vladimir Ponkin worked with many orchestras in various countries outside of the Russian Federation such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony, the Queensland Orchestra, the West Australian Symphony, the Palm Beach Symphony, the Budapest MAV Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Zagreb Philharmonic and appeared with soloists such as Maxim Fedotov, Natalia Gutman, Evgeny Kissin, Vladimir Krainev, Oleh Krysa, Nikolai Petrov, Ivo Pogorelich, Grigory Sokolov, Vladimir Yampolsky and Eliso Virsaladze.

In 1996 Ponkin was appointed Music Director of the Moscow Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre. He started with the preparations of Pjotr Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’ and Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘Othello’, the latter then had an overwhelming premiere in October 1996. In summer 1996 the Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra performed at the 42nd Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, Italy, where Ponkin conducted two extremely successful concerts of French and Russian music. Furthermore he was called Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Moscow State Music Theatre ‘Helikon-Opera’ in 2002.

Born in Irkutsk, Siberia, Vladimir Ponkin graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory and took post-graduate courses with Gennady Rozhdestvensky at the Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Meanwhile Ponkin is holding a Chair position at the ‘Opera and Symphonic Conducting’ Department at this historic institution.

“If you ask Moscow music lovers ‘who is the best conductor of today?’, many of them will answer Vladimir Ponkin!”
MOSCOW KOMMERSANT DAILY

“Ponkin’s baton is superb… Mastership of this active, musically gifted, alert and perceptive conductor should be specially mentioned.”
CORRIERE DELLA SERA

“The new conductor Vladimir Ponkin brings into the performance the gift of a real musician and mastership of an experienced conductor - for a long time the orchestra hasn’t sounded so absolute and perfect.”
NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA

“The Moscow Philharmonic under Vladimir Ponkin created a furious experience… All the details of the piece which are never heard in other performances were delicately played.”
NEUE RHEIN ZEITUNG

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