Ruben Gazarian – conductor
*8 November 1971, Yerevan (Armenia)
Ruben Gazarian took over as the artistic director of the famous Württemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn at the start of the 2002/2003 season. He has strikingly enhanced its standard repertoire by occasionally expanding the WKO to a symphony orchestra and choosing a host of compositions from the Romantic period, the early modern age and the avant-garde.
Ruben Gazarian received his first violin lesson from his father at the age of four. He went on to train at first the P.I. Tchaikovsky Special School of Music and later Yerevan State Conservatory under Prof R. Aharonian, the first violinist of the prestigious Borodin Quartet. Gazarian began his career as a soloist in 1983. While still studying he was appointed concertmaster and soloist of the Armenian State Chamber Orchestra and at the same time was the violinist in the State Piano Trio of the Armenian Broadcasting Corporation.
In 1992 Gazarian continued studying the violin at Leipzig University of Music and Theatre, passing his concert examination in 1995. He remained in Leipzig to train to be a conductor, graduating three years later with the highest grade possible. After being first concertmaster of the West Saxon Symphony Orchestra from 1993 until 1998, Ruben Gazarian was elected its principal conductor in 1999, making him Germany’s youngest principal conductor at that time.
In September 2002, Ruben Gazarian became laureate of the 1st Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition in Frankfurt. That same month he joined the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn as its new principal conductor and artistic director, having been unanimously voted in by both the WKO’s members and the appointments committee.
Ruben Gazarian has appeared as the guest conductor of such celebrated ensembles as the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra, the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra (the orchestra of Frankfurt Opera House), the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. He has also made several live recordings with broadcasters such as Hessische Rundfunk, SWR, WDR, Deutschlandradio, MDR and Radio Svizzera Italiana.
In addition, Gazarian has successfully collaborated with a string of acclaimed soloists, including Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Julia Fischer, Hilary Hahn, Katia & Marielle Labèque, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Sabine Meyer, Viktoria Mullova, Sergei Nakariakov, Gerhard Oppitz, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Beaux Arts Trio, and many more besides.
2009/2010 season
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