Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Russian conductor and composer (1931-2018)
Gennady Nikolayevich Rozhdestvensky, CBE (Russian: Генна́дий Никола́евич Рожде́ственский; 4 May 1931 – 16 June 2018) was a Soviet and Russian conductor, pianist, composer, and pedagogue.
Biography
Gennady Rozhdestvensky was born in Moscow. His parents were the conductor and pedagogue Nikolai Anosov and soprano Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya. His given name was Gennady Nikolayevich Anosov, but he adopted his mother's maiden name in its masculine form for his professional career so as to avoid the appearance of nepotism. His younger brother, the painter P. N. Anosov, retained their father's name.
He studied conducting with his father at the Moscow Conservatory and piano with Lev Oborin. Already known for having conducted Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre at the age of 20, he quickly established his reputation. He premiered many works by Soviet composers, including Edison Denisov's Le soleil des Incas ("The Sun of the Incas"; 1964), and gave the Russian premiere of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Western premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival.
He became general artistic director of the Bolshoi Theatre in 2000, and in 2001 conducted the world premiere of the original version of Sergei Prokofiev's opera The Gambler. Not long afterward he resigned, citing desertion by singers, production problems, and hostile coverage by the Moscow press.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q437262. VIAF identifies the subject as 218144783034082019009. The Library of Congress control number is n81080024. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 2018, 1964 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gennady Rozhdestvensky” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.