Conductor Kirill Petrenko To Lead LA Philharmonic

Petrenko, who is general music director of the Komische Oper Berlin, makes his Hollywood Bowl debut with this concert, and Lugansky, who won the Tenth International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1994, last appeared at the Bowl in 1999.

Russian conductor KIRILL PETRENKO became general music director of the Komische Oper Berlin in 2002 after he had held the same position - as the youngest GMD in Germany until then - at the Theater Meiningen (1999 - 2002). Born in Omsk/Russia in 1972, he received his musical education at the College of Music in Omsk, moved to Austria, where he studied at the Music Conservatory in Feldkirch, graduated with outstanding honors, and began conducting at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

He made his operatic debut with Britten's "Let´s make an opera" in 1995, after having conducted many smaller orchestras. In 1997/ 98 Petrenko became Kapellmeister at the Vienna Volksoper where he later returned with the succesful productions of Boris Godunov and Così fan tutte. During his tenure with the Theater Meiningen, he conducted his first complete Ring des Nibelungen, which attracted the attention of the international press and audience alike.

Petrenko has guest conducted international opera companies and orchestras, including the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the State Opera Dresden, the Vienna State Opera, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Opera de Bastille in Paris, the Opera in Lyon, the Edinburgh Festival, the Munich State Opera, the KlangBogen Festival Vienna, the Opera Frankfurt and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London. He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York in 2004. He has also conducted concerts with the WDR-Symphony Orchestra at the Cologne Philharmonic, with RAI Torino, the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the RSO Vienna, the MDR Symphonic Orchestra, in Genoa, the Cleveland Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival and made his successful debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2006.

Moscow-born pianist NIKOLAI LUGANSKY began to play the piano at the age of five and at 16 won a silver medal at the 8th International Bach Competition in Leipzig. Two years later, he won Second Prize at the second Rachmaninoff Competition in Moscow, and in 1992, at 20, was recognized as the best pianist at the International Summer Academy Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 1994, Lugansky won the Tenth International Tchaikovsky Competition. He has since performed worldwide in recital at celebrated concert halls around the world, and in concert with major orchestras including engagements with the San Francisco Symphony, and with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, where he last appeared in 1999. -- www.laphil.com