Stanislav Kochanovsky

Stanislav Kochanovsky has been the chief conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie
Hannover since the start of the 2024/2025 season. His first season with the orchestra was
already full of special concerts and artistic highlights. These include the charity concert by
the President of the Federal Republic of Germany in November 2024, the sing-along concert
for Kirchentag 2025 in Hanover, the tour to the “Festival Internacional de música de
Canarias” on the Canary Islands and concerts with Gil Shaham in Hanover and France. This
season also saw the start of the collaboration with the harmonia mundi label. Their first joint
CD was a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 and works by Rimsky-Korsakov
and Tcherepnin.
Stanislav Kochanovsky is one of the most intriguing artists alive. He is deeply passionate
about symphonic and operatic music alike. In recent years, Kochanovsky has taken the
international music scenes in both genres by storm. Invitations to conduct have seen him
take the podium with the likes of such prestigious ensembles as the Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de
Paris, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the
NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonie and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra.
Throughout his career, he has also collaborated with the main Russian orchestras such as
the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra and the Moscow Philharmonic
Orchestra. He’s collaborated closely with soloists across the globe, including Leonidas
Kavakos, Vilde Frang, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Mikhail Pletnev, Nikolai Lugansky, Kirill
Gerstein, Truls Mørk, and Matthias Goerne. This past May, Stanislav Kochanovsky made his
U.S. debut conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in
Washington DC for which he was lauded by audiences and critics alike. In July, he will direct
the Cleveland Orchestra for the first time.
Stanislav Kochanovsky’s opera work is in equally high demand, with more than thirty operas
in his repertoire. These include some of the greatest works by Mozart, Donizetti, Gounod,
Saint-Saëns, Tschaikowsky, Mussorgsky, Verdi, Puccini, and Wagner. Recent musical-threater
engagements have taken him to the Opernhaus Zürich, the Dutch National Opera
Amsterdam, the Mariinsky Theatre, as well as to the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Since
making his debut at the Verbier Festival in 2017, Kochanovsky has returned for regular guest
appearances to conduct works of both symphony and opera.
In addition to his dedication to the classical repertoire cannon, Stanislav Kochanovsky has
proven himself a fervent promoter not only of contemporary music but of staging works
audiences are rarely exposed to as well. In recent seasons, Kochanovsky has conducted
extraordinary repertoire such as Ligeti’s Requiem, Scriabin-Nemtin’s Mysterium, Kodály’s
Psalmus Hungaricus, Shostakovich’s unfinished opera The Gambler, Myaskovsky’s Silence,
and Weinberg’s Symphony No.21 Kaddish. Additionally, he has staged contemporary pieces
by composers, including Brett Dean, Osvaldo Golijov, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Tobias Broström,
and Pēteris Vasks.
Stanislav Kochanovsky was born in St. Petersburg in 1981. His musical training began at the
city’s famed Glinka Choir Choral College boys’ choir. Kochanovsky studied choral conducting,
organ, and opera-symphonic conducting at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he
graduated with honors. When he was only 25-years-old, Stanislav Kochanovsky joined the
Mikhailovsky Theatre in St.Petersburg, where he would go on to conduct over sixty operas
and ballets. He also served as principal conductor of the State Safonov Philharmonic
Orchestra between 2010 and 2015