Tugan Sokhiev

The Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev was born in 1977 in Ordzhonikidze in North Ossetia, now Vladikavkaz. He studied in St. Petersburg and was among the last pupils of the legendary Ilya Musin, whose students also included Semyon Bychkov, Valery Gergiev, and Teodor Currentzis. Sokhiev first attracted attention in the West in 2002 conducting Puccini’s La Bohème at Welsh National Opera and made his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin the following year. In 2004 he made his first appearance at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence with Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, followed in 2006 by his debut at Houston Grand Opera conducting Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. From 2008 to 2022 Sokhiev served as Music Director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. During the same period, he was Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (2012 to 2016) and Music Director of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (2014 to 2022). Sokhiev is a regular guest conductor with the Berliner Philharmoniker, whose Waldbühne Concert he led in 2019. He also maintains close ties with the Vienna Philharmonic: in 2025 he conducted the orchestra’s Summer Night Concert at Schönbrunn as well as a gala marking the 200th anniversary of Johann Strauss’s birth, and in 2027 he will lead the annual New Year’s Concert. Sokhiev has also partnered with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, as well as with the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. In June 2026 he led a new production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser at Zurich Opera. Sokhiev’s discography encompasses works by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Mussorgsky. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite; the French music critics’ association named him Personality of the Year in 2014, and in 2018 he was awarded the Russian Order “For Merit to the Fatherland.”

Lucerne Festival debut on 9 September 2016, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in a concert of works by Mendelssohn, Tan Dun, and Tchaikovsky.

March 2026