Dmitry Sitkovetsky

Dmitry Yulianovich Sitkovetsky (Russian: Дмитрий Юлианович Ситковецкий; born September 27, 1954) is a Soviet-Russian born classical violinist, conductor and arranger, notably of an arrangement for strings of J S Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Early life

Dmitry Sitkovetsky was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, to violinist Julian Sitkovetsky and pianist Bella Davidovich. His father died in 1958, when Sitkovetsky was just three years old and the family moved to Moscow, where Dmitry entered the prestigious Moscow Conservatory. In 1977, aged twenty-two, he decided to leave the Soviet Union. Dmitry arrived in New York City on September 11, 1977, where he immediately began studying at the Juilliard School.

Biography

Dmitry Sitkovetsky has built up a successful career as a violinist, conductor, arranger, chamber musician and festival director. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, he grew up in Moscow studying at the Moscow Conservatory and after his emigration in 1977, at the Juilliard School in New York. A renaissance man and a magnetic creative force, Dmitry Sitkovetsky is recognised throughout the world for his versatility - violinist, conductor, creator, recording artist, transcriber, and facilitator. He has made a considerable impact on musical society. His interests cover every aspect of musical life and he is seen as a giant personality and also a renowned educator.

Dmitry Sitkovetsky always knew he was "predestined" to be a performer and musician. His mother, Bella Davidovich, the winner of the Chopin Competition in 1949, came from a family of 3 generations of musicians; his father, Julian Sitkovetsky, was the winner of several International competitions and had already established himself as a violinist and artist of exceptional quality at the time of his untimely death at the age of 32.

Over the 4 decades since the launch of his career in Vienna’s Musikverein in 1979, Dmitry Sitkovetsky has formed close relationships and has worked with many of the world's great conductors and orchestras – Sir Neville Marriner, Mariss Jansons, Sir Colin Davis, Yuri Temirkanov; Berlin PO, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony, Philharmonia, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Bayerischer RF, Munich PO and the NHK Symphony. His celebrated career as a violinist is documented in an extensive discography of more than forty recordings, reflecting the impressive breadth of his repertoire from J.S.Bach to Rodion Shchedrin.

Sitkovetsky has also established a flourishing career as a conductor, and has worked with orchestras such as Academy of St-Martin-In-The-Fields, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Orchestra della Toscana, San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Shanghai Symphony, and Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, In 1990, he founded the New European Strings Chamber Orchestra (NES), bringing together the most distinguished string players from the top European ensembles, from both Russian and Western musical backgrounds (reflecting Dmitry’s own life story). Since 2003, Sitkovetsky has served as the Music Director of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina, to whom he has brought such soloists as Emmanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Lynn Harrell, and Pinchas Zukerman. Previous positions of artistic leadership have included the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y Leon (Artist in Residence, 2006-2009), Russian State Symphony Orchestra ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ (Principal Guest Conductor, 2002-2005), and the Ulster Orchestra (Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor, 1996-2001).

As violinist and guest conductor, Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s 2019/2020 season was busy and varied until all musical life was truncated by Covid-19. Sitkovetsky was performing extensively throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, with such orchestras as the Lucerne Symphony, Orchestra della Toscana, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Russian State Symphony Orchestra ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’, Sapporo Symphony, Japan Century Symphony, and the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra.

As live performance came to an end in Spring 2020, Dmitry Sitkovetsky turned his attention to creating an innovative on-line presence with the legendary New European Strings. Given his unmatched ability to turn any project into a highly anticipated artistic event, Sitkovetsky brought together remotely a distinguished ensemble of musicians, playing the transcriptions he calls his Opus Coronavirus. He took the piano cycle of Leonid Desyatnikov the Bukovina Preludes, transcribed them, and then recorded them distantly with his NES Virtual Ensemble. These as well as the new Bach Dance Suite transcriptions have been enthusiastically received by a virtual audience of 250,000 on social media.

As an eloquent and dynamic speaker, Dmitry was invited to make his debut TEDx Talk (“The Power of Curiosity”), in which he focused on the importance and unexpected joy of thinking outside the box, as well as the need always to reinvent yourself. His 10-part interview series on Medici.tv (“It Ain’t Necessarily So”), featuring such stars as Evgeny Kissin, Mischa Maisky, Leonidas Kavakos and Yefim Bronfman was shown again last summer and inspired a new series “Sitkovetsky & Friends” where Sitkovetsky interviews the soloists for the upcoming season of the Greensboro Symphony. Sitkovetsky recently launched his new programme, “Transformation: the Art of re-invention at the time of the Pandemic”, which goes out live on his YouTube channel every Sunday and features conversations with his friends and colleagues such as Sir Antonio Pappano, Viktoria Mullova, Barry Douglas, Roger Vignoles & others.

It was this same inventiveness and imaginative approach that led Sitkovetsky to be sought out and invited to create, develop and lead a number of festivals - the Korsholm Music Festival, Finland (1983-1993, and 2002), the Seattle International Music Festival (1992-1997), the Silk Route of Music, Azerbaijan (1999), and the Festival del Sole, Tuscany (2003-2006). In 2018/2019, he was invited as Artist-in-Residence of Vadim Repin’s Trans-Siberian Festival. He is a close partner and a regular guest to other distinguished festivals, for example, the Verbier Festival, Ljubljana, and the Enescu Music Festivals.

Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s name is now synonymous with the art of transcription. His iconic orchestral and string trio versions of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations set a bench mark in transcription and over the years, have taken on a life of their own and continue to be heard regularly in performances and recordings by many of the world's leading performers. Following the extraordinary success of the Goldberg Variations, Sitkovetsky has gone on to arrange over fifty works of major repertoire by composers such as Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Schnittke, and Shostakovich. In 2015, he unveiled his transcription of Stravinsky’s Le baiser de la fée, commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and premiered by Augustin Hadelich at Carnegie Hall; in the 2017/2018 season, the premiere of a new multi-genre/multimedia work, Devil, Solider & Violin (inspired by Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale) was given in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Concert Hall with sold-out performances across Russia. In the summer 2018, the Verbier Festival commissioned and gave the world premiere of Sitkovetsky’s transcription of Sarasate’s Navarra Fantasy. This performance, which marked the Festival’s 25th anniversary, was broadcast live worldwide on Medici.tv, with an all-star line up of musicians, including Lisa Batiashvili, Leonidas

Kavakos, Mischa Maisky, Vadim Repin, Maxim Vengerov, Tabea Zimmermann, and Pinchas Zukerman, as well, of course, as Dmitry Sitkovetsky himself.

Since 1987 he has resided in London with his wife, Susan, and their daughter, Julia, who attended The Queen's College, Oxford and is a professional opera singer.


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