Toulouse (AFP)
The Ossetian-born Russian leader Tugan Sokhiev, considered one of the greatest of the young generation, will remain until the summer of 2021 at the head of the National Capitol Orchestra of Toulouse, the town hall said on Thursday.
Mayor LR Jean-Luc Moudenc "extends Tugan Sokhiev's contract (...) for one season", according to a press release.
Tugan Sokhiev had become in 2008 the musical director of the National Orchestra of the Capitol of Toulouse, while assuming this position at the Bolshoi of Moscow since 2014. Toulouse had renewed in 2016, for a duration of 4 years, the contract of the conductor orchestra.
"Attached to Toulouse", he "develops a privileged relationship with his musicians and has contributed to making the National Orchestra of the Capitol of Toulouse one of the most recognized formations on the international musical scene", according to the town hall.
Born in 1977 in Vladikavkaz, capital of the small Russian state of North Ossetia, in a very music-loving family, Tugan asked at the age of seven to make music. His parents, an engineer and a teacher, put him on the piano.
Still very young at the conservatory, he discovered chef Anatoly Briskin. "At his concert, I was surprised that someone could lead a group of musicians," he said in 2016 in an interview with AFP.
After an interview with him, Briskin says to him: "If you want we can try," recalls Sokhiev. "It caught me immediately". Briskin sends him to Saint Petersburg to complete his studies with his own teacher, Ilia Musin.
At 16, he directs pupils for the first time. A year later, he gave his first public concert. On the program, Tchaikovsky. At the start of 2000, he began his international career in Reykjavík with "La Bohème" by Puccini.
Tugan Sokhiev now conducts the largest orchestras.
© 2019 AFP