Artist Biographies
Osmo Vänskä
Osmo Vänskä is Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra, a position he assumed in the 2003-04 season, and he is Conductor Laureate of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in Finland. Until July 2002, he was also chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow. Mr. Vänskä began his musical career as a clarinetist, holding the principal chair in the Turku Philharmonic from 1971 to 1976 and the co-principal chair in the Helsinki Philharmonic from 1977 to 1982. Following conducting studies at the Sibelius Academy with Jorma Panula, he took first prize in the 1982 Besançon International Young Conductor’s Competition and three years later began his affiliation with the Lahti Symphony as principal guest conductor. Mr. Vänskä has also served as music director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (1993 to 1996) and the Tapiola Sinfonietta (1990 to 1992). He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2002, and last appeared with the SFS last week, conducting works by John Adams, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák.
In 2009, Mr. Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra toured Europe, giving performances at venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Vienna Musikverein, and the Barbican in London. Mr. Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra also recently completed a five-year, five-disc project to record the complete Beethoven symphonies on the BIS label. Mr. Vänskä’s new recording initiatives with the Minnesota Orchestra include a five-year project with BIS to record all five Beethoven piano concertos with pianist Yevgeny Sudbin; recording Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony with BIS; and, for the Hyperion label, making live recordings of Tchaikovsky’s Concert Fantasy and Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2, and 3 with pianist Stephen Hough.
As a guest conductor, Mr. Vänskä has appeared with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the major symphonies of Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Pittsburgh, and Saint Louis. In Europe, he has led the Berlin, London, Czech, and Helsinki Philharmonics, London’s BBC Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Orchestre de Paris, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Osmo Vänskä holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow, and in 2002 he received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in recognition of his contributions to classical music. He was named Musical America’s 2005 Conductor of the Year, received the Finland Foundation Arts and Letters Award in 2006, and was given an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Minnesota School of Music in 2008.
Vadim Repin
Born in Siberia in 1971, Vadim Repin started to play violin at the age of five and gave his first stage performance six months later. At eleven he won the gold medal in all age categories in the Wieniawski competition and gave his recital debuts in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1985, Mr. Repin made his debuts in Tokyo, Munich, Berlin, and Helsinki, and a year later he debuted at Carnegie Hall. Two years later, he became the youngest-ever winner of the Reine Elisabeth Concours violin competition.
In 1991 Vadim Repin appeared in the San Francisco Symphony’s Great Performers Series as soloist in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the USSR State Symphony, Yevgeny Svetlanov conducting. He made his first appearance with the San Francisco Symphony in December 1992, with Valery Gergiev conducting Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Since then, he has returned numerous times, most recently in 2004 with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. Mr. Repin has been a frequent guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Rheingau, Gstaad, Verbier, and the BBC Proms, and performed the Beethoven Violin Concerto at Tanglewood in the summer of 2009. This past summer also marked his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in a performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Mr. Repin regularly collaborates with Nikolai Lugansky and Itamar Golan in recital, and his 2008-09 season included recitals in cities all over the world, including Salzburg, Vienna, Geneva, London, Paris, Milan, New York, and Tokyo.
The 2009-10 season brings Vadim Repin to orchestral engagements in North America with the National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony, and Milwaukee Symphony. Mr. Repin will also embark on a tour to Asia and the Pacific: He travels to Japan twice, first with the Malaysian Philharmonic and then with the Munich Philharmonic; then to Australia with the London Philharmonic.
Vadim Repin’s recordings include Russian violin concertos by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky on Warner Classics. His first recording on the Deutsche Grammophon label features the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti, coupled with Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with Martha Argerich on piano. Mr. Repin plays on the 1736 “Von Szerdahely” by Guarneri del Gesù.