Trivia

He was the conductor for pianist Van Cliburn's famous 1958 recording of Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto No.1", the work which enabled Cliburn to win the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958.

Having spent many hours at rehearsals, he made a firm decision at the age of 14 to become a conductor.

His performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No.1 attracted the composer's attention and led to the formation of a firm friendship.

Kondrashin defected from the Soviet Union in December 1978 while touring in the Netherlands and sought political asylum there, whereupon the Soviet regime immediately banned all his previous recordings. He took the post of Permanent Guest Conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1978 and remained in that position until his death.

He studied at the Moscow Conservatory from 1931 to 1936 under the conductor Boris Khaikin.

Kondrashin began conducting in the Young People's Theatre in Moscow in 1931, continuing in the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre three years later.

In 1971, he demonstrated support of controversial American communist figure Angela Davis.

He conducted at the Maly Opera Theatre in Leningrad from 1938 to 1942 and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow from 1943.

In 1947, he was awarded the Stalin Prize.

His fame grew greatly in 1958, when he led the orchestra in the prizewinning appearances of American pianist Van Cliburn at the Tchaikovsky International Competition. Cliburn charmed both his home country and his Russian hosts, and the resulting LP record of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, conducted by Kondrashin, was a long-time best seller.

Kondrashin was the first Soviet conductor to appear in the U.S.

On the recording of Shostakovich's sixth symphony Kondrashin can be heard tapping or even pounding his foot as he conducts the lively final movement.

Kondrashin died in Amsterdam from a heart attack in early 1981, on the same day he conducted Mahler's First Symphony with the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra.

In his memory, the Kondrashin Competition was founded in 1994. This competition is one of the world's toughest conducting competitions and is held once every 5 years.

Kiril Petrovich Kondrashin was internationally the best-known conductor of the Soviet Union and also the most prominent one to emigrate from that country.

He conducted several performances in Europe and America with other famous Russian musicians like Rostropovich, Oistrakh, and Richter.

He was the U.S.S.R.'s finest interpreter of Mahler, leading all the symphonies with unusual restraint and with the expressive and dramatic qualities of the music seemingly enhanced by understatement.

He was known for vigorous and solid performances of a wide repertory, particularly the Russian masters.

In 1960 he was named artistic director of the Moscow Philharmonic, and as such participated in another piano concerto blockbuster recording with a U.S. piano star, the great Prokofiev Third Concerto recording for Mercury with Byron Janis, still considered by many the greatest interpretation of that brilliant work on disc.

Kondrashin's performances were bright and dramatic, tending to programmatic interpretations that commentators saw as the legacy of his theater career.

In 1972 he was awarded "People's Artist of the USSR".

In 1943, he became a member of the conducting staff of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater, which was also in a wartime home outside the capital. He remained with the Bolshoi until 1956, making marked improvement in his interpretation.

He left the Moscow Philharmonic in 1975, turning to guest conducting. As a result of high demand outside the U.S.S.R., he decided to emigrate in 1978. He was named permanent conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 1979, and immediately began making a notable series of recordings with them, but died in that city only two years later.

Along with other artists who were deemed important to the war effort, he was evacuated from besieged Leningrad after the German invasion of Russia.

In the Netherlands, he married his assistant and interpreter, musicologist Nolda Broekstra (born 1944). When they first met around 1975, Broekstra was 30 years old and spoke no Russian. Both were married and were not fluent in English, the language they spoke with each other. Yet they fell in love, tried to be together when they could, and exchanged letters. Broekstra diligently started studying Russian and English and quickly mastered both languages.