Dmitry Sitkovetsky

Today, Dimitry Sitkovetsy is an artist whose career spans an envious range of musical fields. As a violinist, he has worked with the very best orchestras in the world including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York Philharmonic and Cleveland Orchestras. He has also performed at the Salzburg Festival and at the Lucerne, Edinburgh, Verbier, Ravinia and Mostly Mozart festivals and is a regular visitor to the BBC Proms.

Sitkovetsky is also a committed chamber musician and recitalist and maintains a high profile in this field across the United States and Europe and in the Far East. Along the way he has developed a conducting career as well. Early on he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Ulster Orchestra, with which he toured widely. Today he remains the orchestra’s conductor Laureate.

He is the founding director of the NES Chamber Orchestra that comprises distinguished string players from East and West and has made several recordings with them, including his highly praised string orchestra transcription of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. This was the first venture into what has become for Sitkovetsky an important musical activity.

“Since the first string trio of the Goldberg variations, I have done around 25 transcriptions. This is a kind of musical hobby that gives me a lot of joy,” he says. Sitkovetsky also works extensively as a guest conductor with ensembles such as the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the BBC Philharmonic, and the Academia di Santa Cecilia. "I've been onstage since the age of 7, and I'm 47 now, so I've been onstage for 40 years," he says. "The good thing is that I'm on very familiar terms with most of the composers whose symphonies or oratorios or overtures or concerti might be new to me. It might be the first time I'm conducting those works, but the composers and their styles are very familiar."

Imagination knows no bounds

In 1999, he returned to the place of his birth, and inaugurated the Baku Festival, Azerbaijan and has been a highly successful festival director there. “I feel like a musical alchemist and these festivals are like my laboratory where all my ideas come together,” he says. As a violinist he has an active and varied recording career with an extensive discography having recorded all the major violin concerti including recordings of the Bartok, Shostakovich and Prokofiev concerti. Be it New York, Moscow or London, Dimtry Sitkovetsky says he feels only at home in the big cities.

Although much of the year is spent on tour he has made London his home and lives there today with his wife American soprano Susan Roberts, and their daughter Julia. Sitkovetsky appears alongside many of the world’s great musicians, but says his favorite recital partner remains his mother Bella Davidovitch. “ She is a great example of the true professional. Even at the of age of seventy plus she is still the most professional and well-prepared artist I know."

Breandáin O'Shea