Sergei Stadler

Sergei Stadler (Russian: Сергей Стадлер) is a Russian violinist and conductor.

He is currently Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Saint Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.

Laureate of the international music competitions:

The event and concert at the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, in which Sergei Stadler again played the legendary Italian violinist’s instrument, were timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Saint Petersburg.

Sergei Stadler was born on 20 May 1962 in Leningrad.

He began to study music at the age of 5.

His mother, a pianist and accompanist of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, taught him how to play the piano.

He started to play the violin under the guidance of his father, the violist of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

Stadler graduated from the Special Music School under the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.

Then he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and graduated in three and a half years due to a busy concert and tour schedule.

Later he was enrolled on postgraduate course of the Moscow Conservatory, after which Sergei Stadler began teaching violin art at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.

His professors were B. Sergeev, M. Wayman, B. Gutnikov, L. Kogan, V. Tretyakov, one of his teachers was David Oistrakh.

1976 — Concertino Praga (1st prize);

1979 — Marguerite Long–Jacques Thibaud Competition (Paris) (II Grand Prix and Special Prize for the best performance of French music);

1980 — International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition (Helsinki) (2nd Prize and Special Public Award);

1982 — The International Tchaikovsky Competition (Moscow) (I Prize and Gold Medal).

In 1984, after a tour with the Orchestra of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic around Austria and Germany, his European fame came to the musician.

30 concerts were played, at which the music of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Sibelius, Glazunov, Prokofiev was performed.

H. von Karajan attended the concerts in Vienna.

During this period, Sergei Stadler has been playing the Stradivarius violin, owned by the State Collection.

Before Stadler, David Oistrakh had been playing the same instrument for sixteen years.

13 December 1985 was a remarkable day, because a joint concert with Svyatoslav Richter was held at the Museum A.S. Pushkin in Moscow, where Caprices by Paganini and Caprices by Schumann after Paganini sounded.

Being the most welcomed guest on the 300th Bach’s anniversary, he played all the sonatas and partitas in the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig in 1985.

This was followed by a tour in Japan: sonatas and partitas by Bach and Paganini’s “24 Caprices”.

In 1986 in Germany he was awarded a prize for best criticism of the year.

During this period, he played about 150 concerts a year.

In 1987, Sergei Stadler became one of the first foreign soloists to come on a tour around China after a long break.

Concerts were played in Beijing and Shanghai.

In January 1988, the musician’s first performance with an orchestra without a conductor took place because of a sad event – two days before the concert, maestro E. Mravinsky had died.

However, held in the Leningrad Philharmonic, the concert marked the beginning of a series of successful projects with an orchestra without a conductor.

In the early 90s, the musician played with the Russian National Orchestra all of Mozart’s violin compositions in Moscow and recorded Mozart’s concerts with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

A very special event in the musician’s life was related to the arrival of the violin Niccolo Paganini in St. Petersburg in 1995.

Sergei Stadler became an organizer of the two-day festival “The Paganini Violin in the Hermitage”, held with the support of the governments of St. Petersburg and Genoa and sponsored by the fashion house Trussardi.

Also he was the first performer to be honored to play the violin “Il Cannone” Guarneri del Gesu in open concerts, after which Academician Likhachev named him «Russian Paganini».

From 1995 to present, Sergei Stadler has been organizing annual New Year’s concerts in the Concert Hall P. Tchaikovsky in Moscow.

Since 1997, cycles of concerts “Music in the Hermitage Halls” have been organized in one of the most famous Museums of the world — the music performed by the maestro sounds in the Georgievsky, Armorial, Knights, Pavilion, Aleksandrovsky, Concert and other iconic halls of the Winter Palace.

A number of opera productions were specially made for the Hermitage Theater.

From 1998 to 2008 he was the artistic director of the International Music Festival in Perm.

From 1998 to 2001 he was the Chief Conductor of the Theater of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

The violin arrived in the Saint Petersburg in 2003 for the second time.