Valery Polyansky
Valery Polyansky is the musician talented in many aspects, of the highest culture and deep expertise. His conductor's charisma is equally evident in the sphere of choral art, as well as at the control of the symphony orchestra, and creative searches are brilliantly implemented in a variety of genres: the operas, the works for the a cappella choir, monumental cantata and oratorical works, symphonies, modern compositions.
Valery Polyansky was born in 1949 in Moscow. He graduated from College at the Moscow Conservatory (studied under Evstolia Zvereva), then the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, where he studied simultaneously in two departments: conductor and choir (class of Professor Boris Kulikov) and opera and symphony conducting (class of Odyssey Dimitriadi).
In graduate school, the fate brought Polansky with Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who had a great influence on the further creative activity of the young conductor.
The most important milestone in the life of Valery Polyansky was in 1971 when he organized a Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory students and also became a conductor of the Moscow Operetta Theatre.
In 1975, in Italy, Valery Polyansky and his Chamber Choir became unconditional winners at the largest International competition "Guido d'Arezzo". For the first time, the choir from Russia received a Gold medal in the nomination "academic singing", having also received the "Golden Bell"—the symbol of the best choir of the competition. Valery Polyansky was awarded a special prize as the best conductor of the competition. The Italians then wrote about V. Polyansky: "This is a genuine Karajan of choral conducting who possesses exceptionally bright and flexible musical sense."
In 1977, V. Polyansky, without leaving the Choir, became the conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre, where he participated together with G. Rozhdestvensky in the production of Shostakovich's Opera "Katerina Izmailova", lead other performances
Valery Polyansky was awarded a special prize as the best conductor of the competition. The Italians then wrote about V. Polyansky: "This is a genuine Karajan of choral conducting who possesses exceptionally bright and flexible musical sense."
While leading the State Chamber Choir, Valery Polyansky has been cooperating with leading symphonic ensembles of Russia and foreign countries, has performed with orchestras of the Republic of Belarus, Iceland, Finland, Germany, Holland, the USA, Taiwan, and Turkey. He staged Tchaikovsky's Opera Eugene Onegin at the Gothenburg Musical Theatre (Sweden), and for several years he was the principal conductor of the Opera nights festival in Gothenburg. Since 1992 Valery Polyansky has been the Artistic Director and chief conductor of the State Academic Symphony Capella of Russia.
The conductor has made about 100 recordings at leading recording companies, both abroad and in Russia.
The conductor has made about 100 recordings at leading recording companies, both abroad and in Russia. Among them, the works by Tchaikovsky, Taneyev, Glazunov, Skryabin, Bruckner, Dvorak, Reger, Szymanowski, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Schnittke (the Eighth Symphony, Schnittke, issued by English company Сhandos records in 2001, recognized as the best recording of the year). It should not go unspoken about the recording of all the choral concerts of the wonderful Russian composer D. Bortnyansky and the revival of the music of A. Grechaninov, that was almost not performed in Russia. V. Polyansky has a unique wide-ranging repertoire, conducting all symphonic, opera, and spiritual scores of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky; he conducted monographic cycles "Beethoven and his time", "Mahler and his time". A special page of his biography is the live operas. V. Polyansky has staged about 10 operas by Verdi, as well as operas by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schnittke. Valery Polyansky annually tours with the groups of the State Capella in the cities of Russia and abroad, he is especially popular in the UK and in Japan, which he visited twice only in 2017, successfully performing in Nagoya, Tokyo, Kagoshima, Sapporo.
