Alexander Vedernikov joins the Royal Danish Opera as Chief Conductor from September 2018.  He was Chief Conductor of the Odense Symphony Orchestra from 2009 to 2018 and prior to that he was Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre from 2001 until 2009, during which time he was credited with rebuilding the Bolshoi Theatre’s historical reputation for artistic excellence.

Recent and future highlights include performances with the BBC Symphony at the Proms including the world premiere of Joby Talbot’s new guitar concerto, an appearance at the Prague Spring Festival, guest engagements with the City of Birmingham, Danish National Symphony, NHK Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Netherland Radio Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, RTE Symphony and Russian National Symphony Orchestras amongst many others.

Vedernikov has also worked with the Orchestre de Paris, Netherlands Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Orchestra Verdi Milan, London Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Czech Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Bayerischer Rundfunk, China Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, Montreal Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic and St. Petersburg Philharmonic orchestras.  He works regularly with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and has performed a broad range of repertoire with them, including Prokfiev’s 3^rd Symphony at the Proms, a newly created version of Mahler’s Das Knaben Wunderhorn by Detlev Glanert with Dietrich Henschel and works from Haydn and Brahms to Schinttke, Tippett and John Adams.

In spring 2018 Alexander Vedernikov conducted a highly acclaimed production of the Ring Cycle at Odense’s new Odeon Theatre with an exciting cast, including Torsten Kerl as Siegfried, Catherine Foster and Jennifer Wilson as Brünnhilde and Gerhard Siegel as Mime, a major project which concluded his tenure there as Chief Conductor.  Elsewhere in the field of opera, Alexander Vedernikov has frequently conducted at Berlin’s Komische Oper, and has worked throughout Italy at La Scala in Milan, La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro Regio in Turin and Opera di Roma.  He has conducted productions at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Bastille Opera in Paris, the Finnish National Opera, Zurich Opera, Frankfurt Opera and Royal Stockholm Opera and Savonlinna Festival as well as the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.

Alexander completed his musical studies at the Moscow Conservatory in 1990 and from 1988-90, he worked at Moscow’s Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre.  From 1988-95, he was assistant to the chief conductor and second conductor of the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra (formerly Gosteleradio’s Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra), and in 1995, he founded the Russian Philharmonia Symphony Orchestra and was Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of this orchestra until 2004.

Vedernikov was born in Moscow on 11 January 1964, and was raised in a musical family. His father, also named Alexander, was famed throughout the Soviet Union and beyond for his interpretations of such roles as Boris Godunov and Kutuzov in Prokofiev’s War and Peace; his mother, Natalia Gureyeva was a professor of organ at the Moscow Conservatory.