Musicians bustle, tune, browse notes, the hall is filled with a huge number of sounds, the air is filled with the expectation of a miracle. A few minutes pass, and the artists rise and greet the conductor. He very modestly thanks his listeners and turns to the orchestra. At this very second, an amazing thing happens when one person connects to himself an entire orchestra of dozens of people. Dmitriev Alexander Sergeevich was able to do this like no other. For him, the profession of conductor was not just a job - it is a whole spiritual mission.
Young conductor years
Conductor Alexander Sergeevich Dmitriev is a professor, people's artist, honored art worker, legendary man who is known and remembered in Russia and abroad.
The maestro was born in St. Petersburg in a family in which his father was a musician of the orchestra of the greatest Soviet conductor Evgeny Alexandrovich Mravinsky. A love of music was instilled in him from childhood.
As a boy, he joined the choir chapel and received the very first, but very important musical experience. In 1953, Alexander Sergeevich brilliantly graduated from the M.I. Choral School Glinka continued to enter the Leningrad Conservatory named after N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov at once into two departments: the conductor-choral (to the class of the teacher Kudryavtseva Elizaveta Petrovna) and the historical and theoretical (to the class of the teacher Tulin Yuri Nikolaevich).
Sensing a further creative upsurge, Alexander Sergeyevich continued to study at the Leningrad Conservatory and already became a graduate student in the class of opera and symphonic conducting with Nikolai Semenovich Rabinovich.
Becoming a professional
After graduating from the conservatory, the maestro’s studies do not end yet, and the biography of Alexander Sergeyevich Dmitriev is increasingly filled with significant and outstanding events. In 1968, he trained at the Vienna Academy of Music. The conductor notes the high professionalism of the teachers at the new place of study, but nevertheless, the native walls of the Leningrad Conservatory gave him the most invaluable experience.
As a child, when his father worked with Evgeny Alexandrovich Mravinsky, he could not imagine that a year after graduating from the conservatory he would gain invaluable experience working in the Leningrad Philharmonic under the guidance of a master. Dmitriev himself noted a special trepidation in relation to himself from the great conductor. Subsequently, Alexander Sergeyevich himself replaced Mravinsky many times in connection with the deterioration in the health of Yevgeny Aleksandrovich.
Alexander Sergeevich Dmitriev recalls his first debut on February 5, 1967 in the large hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. The conductor still keeps the poster from that important event. Since 1971, he became the chief conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra in St. Petersburg.
Alexander Sergeevich successfully performed in the USSR and abroad. As he himself recalled, he was very fond of traveling, but almost always this happens under duress, because he is inextricably linked with his orchestra.
Teaching activities
Dmitriev Alexander Sergeevich is also a distinguished teacher of the Leningrad and now St. Petersburg Conservatory.
While still studying at the Leningrad Conservatory, at the insistence of his teacher, Alexander Sergeyevich began to teach. The pedagogical work of the maestro was very long and difficult. From 1971 and until the 1990s, he was a teacher and already as a professor left the conservatory to devote himself more to the conducting business in the city of Stavanger in Norway. But eight years later, Alexander Sergeyevich returned and again became an honorary teacher of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
The maestro speaks to his students a very important truth, said by Richard Wagner, the ingenious German composer: "The score should be in the head, not the head in the score."
Concert repertoire
For his long work, Alexander Sergeyevich Dmitriev conducted dozens and even hundreds of different works throughout Russia and Europe. Many invited him to the United States.
The maestro’s repertoire is incredibly wide: it begins with ancient Italian Baroque music by composers Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Sebastian Bach, Russian classics Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, foreign classics Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven and ends with the works of the most modern foreign and domestic composers.
Alexander Sergeevich went down in history as one of the few who conducted the recording of the full cycle of Beethoven and Schubert symphonies. The maestro was one of the first Soviet conductors who participated in the first productions of the works of Gluck, Orff, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Handel, which were not previously staged in the Soviet Union. During his long career, the conductor managed to work with many talented and famous world artists - such as pianist Polina Osetinskaya, cellist Alexei Massarsky, etc.
Happy anniversary, maestro!
In 2015, Alexander Dmitrievich celebrated his 80th birthday. On the eve of the holiday, a series of concerts was held at the Philharmonic of St. Petersburg, dedicated to this special date. The maestro is used to celebrating his birthdays with his family. And even despite the already significant age, Alexander Sergeyevich still continues to delight the audience, managing the orchestra, doing his best at the conductor's desk.