Tugan Sokhiev was born in 1977 in Vladikavkaz. After studying conducting with Anatoli Briskin for two years, he began to study with Ilya Musin in St. Petersburg. In 2001 he graduated from St. Petersburg State Conservatoire (Yuri Temirkanov’s class).
In 2002 Tugan Sokhiev made his debut at the Welsh National Opera (La Bohиme), followed by his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2003 (Eugene Onegin). The same year, the conductor appeared for the first time with the Philharmonia orchestra in London, performing Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony. In 2004 he conducted The Love for Three Oranges at the festival in Aix-en-Provence, followed by successful revivals in Luxembourg and at the Teatro Real in Madrid. In 2006 he conducted an acclaimed performance of Boris Godunov at the Houston Grand Opera.
Since 2005 Tugan Sokhiev has been a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre where he has performed premieres of productions of the operas Il viaggio a Reims, Carmen and The Tale of Tsar Saltan.
Since 2008, he has been Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse; previously, for several years he had been Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Director of that orchestra. The ensemble’s first recordings on the Naпve Classique label (Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf) received rave reviews in the press. Their most recent release including Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Firebird was released in January 2013.
Since 2010 Tugan Sokhiev has also been Principal Conductor of the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
Tugan Sokhiev has conducted a series of concerts in Vienna, Ljubljana, Zagreb, San Sebastian and Valencia as well as in various towns and cities in France, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Spain, China and Japan.
In 2009 the conductor made his debut with the Wiener Philharmoniker. In recent concert seasons Tugan Sokhiev has conducted the operas The Golden Cockerel, Iolanta, Samson et Dalila, The Fiery Angel and Carmen at the Mariinsky Theatre as well as The Queen of Spades and Iolanta at the Thйвtre du Capitole de Toulouse.
In July 2011 he conducted the opera Aida with the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse at the Chorйgies d’Orange festival.
The conductor frequently appears on tour throughout Europe, performing as a guest conductor in cities including Strasbourg, Montpellier and Frankfurt. He works with ensembles such as the Swedish Radio Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Stockholm, the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Radio France, the Orchestre national de France, the Finnish Radio Orchestra, the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester (Berlin), the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra of the Bayerische Staatsoper (Munich).
Highlights of recent seasons also include successful performances with the Orquesta Nacional de Espaсa and the RAI Orchestra (Turin) as well as a series of concerts at the Teatro alla Scala. Moreover, Tugan Sokhiev has performed as a guest conductor with the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), the Arturo Toscanini Symphony Orchestra, Japan’s NHK Orchestra and the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia.
The 2012/13 season included debuts with the Chicago Symphony and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras and returns to Vienna Philharmonic and Rotterdam Philharmonic. Opera includes his return to Vienna State Opera for Boris Godunov and a Stravinsky ballet project at Theatre du Capitole.
In 2014 Tugan Sokhiev was appointed Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre.
Awards
Prize-winner at the III Prokofiev International Conducting Competition (1999)
Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merite (2013)