Alexander Vasilyevich Alekseev (Russian: Александр Васильевич Алексеев; born 10 March 1938, Belkovo - died 7 October 2020, St. Petersburg) was a Ukrainian and Russian conductor and teacher, Honoured Artist of the RSFSR since 1978, professor since 1992. Brother of the conductor and composer Yuri Alekseev.
He was born on 10 March 1938 in the village of Belkovo (now Khvoyninsky District, Novgorod Region, Russia). In 1946, his family moved to the city of Gatchina, Leningrad Oblast. From 1953 to 1957 he studied at the Department of Choral Conducting at the Music School of the Leningrad Conservatoire, and from 1957 - at the Leningrad Conservatoire: from 1957 to 1962 in the class of Professor Konstantin Olkhov at the Department of Choral Conducting; from 1960 to 1966 - in the class of Professor Eduard Grikurov at the Conducting and Symphony Faculty. At the same time, in 1963-1966, he worked as a conductor, assistant to the chief conductor of the State Academic Maly Opera Theatre in Leningrad, conducting Dmitriy Shostakovich's opera Katerina Izmailova, which was his diploma work; and in 1964-1968, he taught at the Department of Choral Conducting at the N.K. Krupskaya Leningrad Institute of Culture.
In 1968-1978, he worked as a conductor, and in 1978-1982, he was the chief conductor of the Ulyanovsk Symphony Orchestra. In 1970-1976, he also taught conducting at the Ulyanovsk Music College; from November 1971 to September 1972, he took an internship at the Hochschule für Musik und Performing Arts in Vienna. From 1982 to 1984 he was a trainee conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Since 1984, he has been the chief conductor of the Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. At the same time, he directed the student symphony orchestra of the Kharkiv Institute of Arts named after I. P. Kotlyarevsky: from December 1984 he taught at the Department of Folk Instruments, from 10 September 1986 - Senior Lecturer, from 2 November 1987 - Associate Professor of the Department of Orchestral Strings, from 2 September 1991 to 22 September 1992 - Associate Professor of the Department of Folk Instruments.
Since October 1992, he has been a professor of the Department of Opera and Symphony Conducting at the Rimsky-Korsakov St Petersburg State Conservatoire, conductor of the Opera and Ballet Theatre at the Conservatoire. In 2000-2010 he was the dean of the conducting faculty.
He died in St. Petersburg on 7 October 2020. He was buried in St. Petersburg at the Volkovsky Cemetery[2].
Creative work
During his creative career, he collaborated with musicians and singers Oleh Krysa, Bohodar Kotorovych, Gidon Kremer, Volodymyr Spivakov, Arno Babadzhanyan, Andrii Ashpai, Volodymyr Krainev, Dmytro Hnatiuk, Anatolii Solovianenko, Zurab Sotkilava, and numerous choirs of the former Soviet Union. In Ukraine, he collaborated with the Kyiv Dumka Choir and the Kyiv Men's Choir. He held masterclasses in St Petersburg in 1996 and in Seoul in 1997-1999.
His tours took place in Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, South Korea, Poland, Romania, and France.
