Tugan Sokhiev is the new Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO).
In September 2012 he took up his post as the seventh Music Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Following two years as Music Director Designate, the 34-year-old North Ossetian conductor thereby officially succeeds Ferenc Fricsay, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kent Nagano and Ingo Metzmacher at the head of the DSO.
Works of Russian and Slavic composers form the focus of the concerts in his first season with an emphasis on rarely or under-performed compositions. This pertains to Sergei Prokofiev’s oratorical compositions as well as to the works of other composers whose spiritual world does not end in the east at the Ural, nor in the south with the Balkan and the Caucasus. Tugan Sokhiev pursues the thematic strand that he began last season with Sergei Prokofiev’s ‘Alexander Nevsky’ cantata and with ‘Ivan the Terrible’ prepares one of the composer’s oratorios that is probably experienced even more rarely. Works like ‘Islamey’ by Mili Balakirev and an instrumental concerto by Mieczysław Weinberg are among other explorations of the season. With works by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Schubert and Schumann, great musical creations of European symphonic music are also on the programme.
