Victor Fedotov
The name of Victor Fedotov, an outstanding Russian conductor, Professor, People’s Artist of Russia, is well known among the music-lovers all over the world. The life and work of this brilliant conductor is bound to the Mariinsky Theatre in St-Petersburg.
In 1963 the young conductor, a winner of All-Union Competition, made his debut at the Theatre with “Carmen” by Bizet. He performed it by heart, without the scores; since then, maestro Fedotov kept the tradition of conducting by heart during all his career.
Since 1964 he toured in USA and Canada with the Metropo-litan-Opera orchestra; he ap-peared with Mariinsky orchestra in Australia, Great Britain, Aus-tria, Germany, Spain, Korea, Japan and other countries.
Since 1966, he regularly worked in the Royal Covent Garden Theatre in London. In 1967, he staged “Evgeny On-egin” by Tchaikovsky in Germany with the Dresden Staads Or-chestra. At the same time, he gave numerous symphony concerts and conducted the new versions of “Romeo and Juliet” and “The Swan Lake” in Zemper-Opera. Victor Fedotov’s repertoire included more than 60 operas and ballets.
New productions of “Ivan Susanin” by Mikhail Glinka and “Tzar’s Bride” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov under his conductorship, as well as “Boris Godunov” by Mussorgsky that for the first time in its history was performed in the original version, became great musical events. This opera was performed in Stokholm during a tour to Sweden of the whole company of the Mariinsky Theatre.
"The orchestra under Victor Fedotov with his precise and broad gesture, has transferred with a rare transparency all the charm of music by Rimsky-Korsakov", the Powery-ecko newspaper observed in 1974. At that time, Maestro Fedotov was the Principal conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre.
Sundy Telegraph wrote that "…a great skill of the conductor Victor Fedotov in possession of the orchestra and his amazing consolation with the musicians… became a practical lesson how to conduct…"
Maestro Fedotov was one of the leading conductors of the Theatre and the art director of all main ballet productions; all ballet stars of the Mariinsky Theatre always felt greates respect and affection towards this outstanding musician, and together they made more than a 30 years’ epoche in the history of the Theatre.
Andrei Petrov, a famous composer and the author of the ballet “Creation of the World”, wrote about his work with Victor Fedotov: "I had an opportunity to value many remarkable qualities of this conductor… he always works very enthusiastically… besides, he has a gift of "seeing" the music, not only hearing it... it sounds very theatrically and expressively".
Among the premieres staged under his directorship are works by contemporary composers: “Left-hander” by B.Alexandrov, “Angara” by A.Eshpay, “Hamlet” by N.Tchervinsky, “The Villain and the devil” by V.Kladnizky, opera “Interven-tion” by V.Uspensky, “Pathetic Oratorio” by G.Sviridov, “Leningrad Symphony” by D.Shos-takovich, “Cinderella” by S.Prokofiev, “Notre Dame de Paris” by M.Jarre and others.
On the Lenfilm Studio, more than 30 films were made with the music recorded by Leningrad Symphony Orchestra conducted by Victor Fedotov; among them - “Marriage in Malinovka”, “Farewell to St.Petersburg”, “Green coach", "Snowgirl", "Silver strings", "Snow Queen", "The farewell debut", “The Swan Lake”…
Maestro Fedotov’s more than thirty years long partnership with the Leningrad Philharmony made a special chapter of his creative life. He gave dozens of concerts in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmony with the two world famous Philharmony orchestras, collaborated with most eminent soloists and composers, made lots of recordings.
As a symphonic conductor, Victor Fedotov toured with Covent Garden Theatre orchestra, London Symphony and London Philharmony orchestras, Orchestra of the Vienna Theatre, Liceo of Barcelona, Gewandhaus and MDR in Leipzig, Bratislava and Brno Symphony Orchestras, Japanese orchestras - NHK, Tokyo Symphony...
Since 1972, Victor Fedotov was a professor of of opera and symphony conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, gave master classes in Russia and abroad.
Appart from Mariinsky Theatre, he worked with many important theatres such as Royal Stokholm Theatre (since 1994); Royal Covent Garden Theatre in London and Grand Opera in Paris (since 1995); New National Opera in Tokyo (since 1996) as a long term guest conductor.
Since 1996, he was a member of the Petrovskaya (Peter) Aca-demy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1998, he got the Evening Standard award for outstanding achievements in classical music performing Peter Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893), a great Russian composer, is probably one of the most ingenious musicians in the world’s musical history.