Some very exciting news for music making in East Netherlands announced earlier today. Alexei Ogrintchouk is appointed the new Chief Conductor of the Phion Orchestra from May 2023.
After spending 22 years as the principal oboist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra and pursuing a most successful career as a soloist, Ogrintchouk is now increasingly turning his attention to the world of conducting. Following performances all over the world as a soloist in venues and festivals that include the BBC Proms (after earning the coveted distinction of BBC New Generation Artist in 2005), the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Mariinsky Theatre and Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to name a few, audiences in East Netherlands will increasingly be the lucky recipients of his talents.
Phion press release | Monday 8th May 2023
Alexei Ogrintchouk: the musician
Watch a Concertgebouw Orchestra interview below with Dominic Seldis in February 2021, where Ogrintchouk talks about his journey as a musician. On reflection, he talks of entering the specialist Gnessin Music School in Moscow at the tender age of ten after learning the oboe for just one year before moving to France to study in the Paris Conservatory aged 16. Unquestionably, landing the rather amazing job of principal oboist at the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 1999 aged 20 with Valery Gergiev, served as an important stepping stone to achieving the solo oboe chair at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra just six years later in 2005 with Mariss Jansons, Daniele Gatti and now Klaus Mäkelä at the helm…
Alexei Ogrintchouk: the conductor
In the interview, we learn that one day a few years ago, Ogrintchouk woke up one morning and felt a yearning, an internal drive to be in touch with the full orchestral score and not just the oboe part. He had such musical luggage inside him that he felt a necessity to share this yearning, this love of music with the world and at the same time to develop himself, to communicate with others and to give this love to the next generation.
And so conducting seemed the natural extension of his work as an orchestral musician, soloist, and teacher; a path where he could be true to himself and find his true artistic personality and identity. Conducting engagements to date have included work with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra the Mariinsky Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.
Engaging musical calibre of this kind in East Netherlands is incredibly exciting. I very much look forward to witnessing this collaboration between Ogrintchouk and Phion first hand, seeing it blossom and flourish.
Click here to find out more about Ogrintchouk in concert with Phion later this week and next, in a programme featuring Barber’s Violin Concerto with the Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen, and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.
Cover photo of Alexei Ogrintchouk 📸Marco Borggreve
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