Sasha Rozhdestvensky is considered one of Russia’s finest young violinists. Yehudi Menuhin pronounced him to be “one of the most talented and refined violinists of his generation”, while the legendary violinist Ivry Gitlis said of him: ‘He belongs to the great line of outstanding artists. His approach and relationship to music and the violin is intense, highly sensitive and intelligent.’ Sasha studied at the Central Music School in Moscow, the Moscow Conservatory, the Paris Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music in London with Dr. Felix Andrievsky, Zinaida Gilels, Maya Glezarova and Gérard Poulet. He plays several violins, among which are a Guarneri del Gesù and a Stradivari loaned to him by the Stradivari Society. He recently became an ambassador for the Stradivari Society.

Gennady Rozhdestvensky, one of the greatest conductors of the day, was born in Moscow in 1931. He studied the piano with Lev Oborin and conducting with his father, Nikolaï Anosov, at the Moscow Conservatoire. At the unusually early age of 20, still a student at the Conservatoire, he was engaged at the Bolshoi Theatre where he made his début conducting Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty. His was to be a long term relationship with the Bolshoi: he became their principal conductor between 1964 and 1970, and in 2000 was appointed their General Music Director. At the Bolshoi he has conducted more than thirty operas and ballets, and gave the world premiere of Khatchaturian’s ballet Spartacus, and the Russian premiere of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From 1956 on he toured regularly with the Bolshoi ballet in Europe, Asia and America.