Artist biography

Volodymyr Sirenko was born on 1960 in the Poltava region of Ukraine.

His conducting debut took place at the Kyiv Philharmonic Hall in 1983 with works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Boulez. In 1989 Sirenko graduated from the Kyiv Conservatoire where he studied conducting under Prof. Allin Vlasenko. In 1990 he was a finalist at the International Conducting Competition in Prague. A year later he was appointed as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra, a position which he held until 1999. During this period he made over 200 recordings that are kept in the funds of the Ukrainian Radio and include Mozart Symphonies Nos. 38 and 41, Beethoven Symphony No. 9, Brahms A German Requiem, Dvorak Symphonies Nos. 7 and 9, R. Strauss “Macbeth”, Janacek “Taras Bulba”.

From 1999 he is the Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Highlights among hundreds of programmes that he has performed with the orchestra since then were cycles Gustav Mahler’s Complete Symphonies, Bach’s all four Passions and Mass in B Minor, Liatoshynsky’s Complete Symphonies, Honegger’s “Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher”, Berlioz’s “La damnation de Faust”, Debussy’s “Le Martyre de St. Sebastien”.

He recorded over 50 compact discs and the CD of Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005. He premiered many works by Ukrainian composers including Sylvestrov’s Symphonies Nos. 7, 8, 9, Stankovych’s Symphony No. 6, oratorios “A Tale of Igor’s Campain” and “Taras Passion”.

Sirenko has toured Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

He has worked with many international orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Warsovia, NOSPR (Katowice), the Bratislava Radio Symphony, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Israel Sinfonietta, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic. Sirenko has appeared in numerous concert halls around the world, including Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Berliner Philharmonie, Brucknerhaus (Linz), Barbican Hall and Cadogan Hall (London), Theatre des Champs-Elysees and Opera Comique (Paris), Teatro La Fenice (Venice), Seoul Art Center, Palau de la Musica in Valencia and Centro Manuel de Falla in Granada, Filharmonia Narodowa (Warsaw), the Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto), the Tokyo City Opera and the Osaka Symphony Hall.