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Valery Gergiev
Valery Gergiev (born 1953) is a Russian conductor associated with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera and the Mariinski Theatre.
Gergiev was born in Moscow on 2 May 1953 to Ossetian parents, and raised in Vladikavkaz in their native North Ossetia in the Caucasus. No child prodigy, he began to learn the piano at secondary school and then went to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) to study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
In 1978, he became assistant conductor at the Kirov Opera under Yuri Temirkanov, where he made his debut conducting Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace. He was chief conductor of the Armenian State Orchestra from 1981 until 1985.
In 1991, Gergiev conducted a western European opera company for the first time when he conducted the Bavarian State Opera in a performance of Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in Munich, and in the same year made his American début, performing War and Peace with the San Francisco Opera. Since then he has conducted both operatic and orchestral repertoire across the world. Gergiev is associated with numerous music festivals. He has also recorded a broad repertoire with both his Rotterdam and Mariinski bands, and is currently working of a series of Shostakovich symphonies involving a combined orchestra.
He became chief conductor and artistic director of the Kirov in 1988, and overall director of the company, by then renamed the Mariinski, appointed by the Russian government, in 1996. In 1995 he became principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1997, principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Gergiev is particularly renowned for his passionate, almost abrasive, conducting style, and tendency to grunt at the podium. He is a driven conductor who produces his best in pieces of great melodrama.
Gergiev has also been a consistent supporter of peace in the Caucasus, particularly in the conflict between the Georgian central government and South Ossetia.
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