Vladimir Ashkenazy

Vladimir Ashkenazy, born in 1937, Russian-born pianist and conductor. Born in Gorky, he moved with his family to Moscow where he began studying piano at age six. Two years later he entered the Central School of Music in Moscow and in 1955 he entered the Moscow Conservatory. In 1962 he shared first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow with British pianist John Ogden. The following year Ashkenazy went to London to perform and decided to stay. From 1968 to 1978 he lived with his family in Reykjavík, Iceland, and in 1973 he became an Icelandic citizen. His wife, an Icelandic pianist, had come to study at the Moscow Conservatory, where the couple met. In 1978 they moved to Lucerne, Switzerland.

Ashkenazy gained fame for his interpretations of the music of 20th-century Russian composers, including Sergey Rachmaninoff and Sergey Prokofiev, as well as of 19th-century Hungarian-born composer Franz Liszt and other composers of the romantic movement. He has recorded the complete piano music of Rachmaninoff, Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, and Russian composer Aleksandr Scriabin. During the 1980s Ashkenazy began to concentrate more on conducting, and from 1987 to 1994 he served as music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He took the Royal Philharmonic on a tour of the Soviet Union in 1989, the first time he had returned there since 1963. In 1998 he became chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also music director of the European Union Youth Orchestra composed of young musicians from the member nations of the European Union.