Bio
"Maestro Tchivzhel is, simply put, a master,” wrote Yo-Yo Ma after performing Dvorak's Cello Concerto together. “There is an authority and authenticity in his music making that is indisputably commanding and communicative.”
Now entering his 10th season as Music Director and Conductor of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, Edvard Tchivzhel (pronounced CHIV-ZHEL) has become an icon in the Greenville community and a motivational force behind its orchestra.
Born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Russia, into a family of professional musicians, Tchivzhel showed exceptional musical talent from an early age. He graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory with the highest distinction in the areas of piano and conducting, and completed three more years of postgraduate study at the Conservatory's Higher Academy of Music as a member of the prestigious conducting classes of Arvid Jansons. While still a student, Tchivzhel scored a remarkable success by winning the Third Soviet Conductor's Competition in Moscow, and in 1973 became Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Karelian Symphony Orchestra of National Television and Radio (a position he held until 1991), while at the same time working as assistant conductor to the legendary Yevgeni Mravinsky at the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra from 1974-1977. By the late 1970s, Tchivzhel was permanent guest conductor with the Leningrad Philharmonic and regularly conducted the Moscow Philharmonic, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leningrad’s Kirov Theatre of Opera and Ballet, and many other orchestras throughout the former Soviet Union.
As associate conductor of the U.S.S.R. State Symphony Orchestra, Tchivzhel toured widely, with appearances in England, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Scandinavia. In 1986, he became the chief conductor of the Umeå (Sweden) Sinfonietta, and frequently performed with the symphony orchestras of Helsinborg, Malmö and Norrköpping as well as appearing with the Stockholm Philharmonic. He was lauded for his tour to Japan in 1990, and in 1991 was enthusiastically received during a tour of the State Russian Symphony Orchestra in the United States. Following this tour, he defected to the U.S., just six months before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
After defection, Tchivzhel was music director of the Atlantic Sinfonietta in New York for two years and then Music Director for the Fort Wayne (Indiana, US) Philharmonic, where he remained for 15 years, concurrently adding the Greenville Symphony Orchestra in 1999. During this time he guest conducted with the Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Grand Rapids Symphonies as well as in Australia and New Zealand. In New Zealand, he was named Artistic Advisor to the Auckland Philharmonia. In 2003 he returned in triumph for the first time to Russia, to once again conduct the (renamed) St. Petersburg Philharmonic in a performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
Most recently he has given debuts in Venezuela, in Rio de Janeiro, and with the Orchestra Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico in a highly acclaimed premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No.7 (Leningrad), commemorating the victory in World War II. He was invited back to Rio de Janeiro as recently as February 2007, and after performances in Spain in 2006, was invited to perform again in Spain and in Romania in November 2008, and with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in May 2009. His 2008 debut with the Dayton Opera (Verdi’s Macbeth) was hailed by critics as “the triumph of the Dayton Opera.”
Tchivzhel has performed with many great artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Gidon Kremer, Vladimir Spivakov, Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg, Emmanuel Ax, Andre Watts, Janos Starker, Olga Kern, Nicolai Demidenko, Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell, Bella Davidovich, Yuri Bashmet, Doc Severinsen and Pete Fountain. He has made numerous recordings with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Moscow Radio Orchestra, the State Russian Orchestra, the Atlantic Sinfonietta, and with several orchestras in Sweden, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and the Greenville Symphony Orchestra.
Tchivzhel was named Music Director and Conductor for the Greenville Symphony Orchestra in 1999. The Tchivzhel family, now American citizens, make their home in Greenville.
Edvard Tchivzhel
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