Alexander Vedernikov, Russian conductor known for fast tempi and loud fortissimos
He directed thrilling concerts in Britain, supplying 'his own wild-man choreography on the podium' and spent eight years at the Bolshoi

Alexander Vedernikov, who has died in Moscow with Covid-19 aged 56, was a Russian orchestral conductor known for his fast tempi and loud fortissimos; he was once described as “a man who doesn’t accept a meagre fff when ffffff is possible”.

Vedernikov directed many thrilling concerts in Britain, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s centenary performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring at the Barbican in 2013 where a Daily Telegraph critic noted that he “supplied his own wild-man choreography on the podium”. It perhaps helped that Vedernikov was an experienced ballet conductor who had made his Covent Garden debut in December 1996 with the Royal Ballet in Prokofiev’s Cinderella with Darcey Bussell in the title role.

Back in his homeland Vedernikov spent eight years as music director of the Bolshoi Theatre. He had been given the task of restoring the pride of Russia’s most famous performing arts institution in 2001 after the enraged resignation of Gennady Rozhdestvensky who could no longer take the abuse.

He tried to bring about reforms, castigating the use of sets dating from 1948 and introducing contemporary operas such as Leonid Desyatnikov’s Children of Rosenthal, which is set to a libretto by the avant-garde author Vladimir Sorokin about composers being cloned by a scientist and Mozart falling in love with a prostitute. However, he was subjected to threats and his home was surrounded by angry protesters. Remarkably, he lasted eight years with the Bolshoi before resigning on the first day of an Italian tour complaining that the company was putting “bureaucratic interests before artistic ones”.

Over the past decade Vedernikov, a larger-than-life figure with a loose velvet coat and glasses prone to slipping down his nose, had become a regular sight in British concert halls, conducting orchestras in Bournemouth, Birmingham and Manchester. He made his Proms debut in 2016 conducting Stephen Hough in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and returned two years later for a concert dedicated to Rozhdestvensky, who had recently died.

Last year he stretched the Barbican concert hall’s acoustic to breaking point in an ear-splitting account of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with one critic describing how he “built up the knife-edge desperation from the bottom up, out of deep, inky brass, moody woodwind and nervy, growling cellos”.

Alexander Alexandrovich Vedernikov was born in Moscow on January 11 1964, the eldest of three children of Alexander Fillipovich Vedernikov, a renowned Soviet-era bass opera singer known for his interpretation of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, and his wife Natalia Gureeva, a professor of organ at the Moscow Conservatoire; a younger brother became an artist. He spoke of being raised in a small apartment in central Moscow surrounded by the extended family, whose piano lived by his bed.

From a young age he was immersed in the performing arts and went on to study conducting at the Conservatoire. He worked in musical theatre and was assistant to the conductor Vladimir Fedoseyev at the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra before setting up his own Russian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in 1995.

In 1993 he conducted the Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow and in 1997 was drafted in to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in the finals of the World Piano Competition in London. He returned to the competition three years later, this time with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Latterly he was conducting the Odense Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Danish Opera, and was music director of the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St Petersburg, vowing to remain at the latter for as long as his creative instincts were being satisfied.

Alexander Vedernikov is survived by his wife and by a daughter from a previous marriage.

Alexander Vedernikov, born January 11 1964, died October 30 2020.

Source.
The Telegraph, 2 ноября 2020 г.
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