Dmitry Sitkovetsky on the Year That Changed His Musical Career and Celebrating 20 Years Leading the Greensboro Symphony
Dmitry Sitkovetsky.
1983 proved a pivotal year in violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s life. That was the year the Azerbaijan-born musician became a U.S. citizen, married his wife, and bought the Stradivarius violin he still plays to this day. It was also the year he discovered Glenn Gould's final recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations.
That album inspired Sitkovetsky to arrange the Baroque keyboard masterpiece for string orchestra — a project that would forever change the trajectory of his career as a musical artist.
"My transcription gave me a whole other life parallel to my performing career," Sitkovetsky says on the latest episode of the Classical Post podcast. "I'm the fourth generation of professional musicians [in my family], so it was pretty much determined I should play violin and become a concert artist. But that year changed that a great deal. I diversified."
Now, 40 years later, Sitkovetsky has become a multi-hyphenate to the nth degree. In addition to his work as a solo violinist and transcriber, he's a sought-after conductor, music director, and educator; founder of the New European Strings Chamber Orchestra; and host of Medici.tv's interview series It Ain’t Necessarily So — where he's sat down with some of the greatest musicians of our time, including Yefim Bronfman, Barbara Hendricks, and Sir Neville Marriner.
In this episode, we discuss how being a student of history informs Sitkovetsky's music-making and what's in store for his final season as music director of the Greensboro Symphony, an ensemble he's led for 20 years. Plus, he shares the earphones he can't live without while traveling, his favorite New York City restaurant for feasting on sturgeon and caviar, and how he sees his career as being "a keeper of the flame" for classical music.
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