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Dmitrij Kitajenko is one of the great conductors of our time. Equally esteemed in eastern and western Europe, he regularly conducts prestigious orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Among other prizes, his complete recording of Shostakovich's symphonies with the Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra (2005) was awarded the ECHO Klassik.
Dmitrij Kitajenko was born in Leningrad, where he studied at the renowned Glinka School of Music and the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory. He went on to study with Leo Ginzburg in Moscow and in the legendary conducting class of Hans Swarowsky and Karl Österreicher in Vienna. In 1969 he won the first International Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin and was appointed principal conductor of the influential Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow at the age of only twenty-nine. In the early 1970s he very successfully conducted a great number of operas in Moscow and in cities like Vienna, Munich and Brussels in Western Europe.
He became principal conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic in 1976, making it one of the leading orchestras in the world during the fourteen years of his direction and appearing with it in the most important musical centres of Europe, the USA and Japan.
Dmitrij Kitajenko went to the West in 1990, successively becoming principal conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as principal guest conductor of the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. He made guest appearances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Munich Philharmonic, the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala and many American orchestras, performing with the best soloists in the world and with outstanding up-and-coming artists.
Dmitrij Kitajenko has made numerous remarkable recordings with orchestras like the Moscow Philharmonic, the Frankfurt RSO, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra, among them complete recordings of the symphonies of Skryabin, Rakhmaninov, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. He has also recorded works by Chopin, Gade, Grieg, Richard Strauss and Siegfried Wagner. The Manfred Symphony is the first recording to be released in the OehmsClassics complete edition of all Tchaikovsky's symphonies with the Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra.
The Gürzenich Orchestra appointed Dmitrij Kitajenko honorary conductor in March 2009. The title was previously held only by Günter Wand.
