Saulius Sondeckis (Conductor)

Born: Born: October 11, 1928 - Šiauliuose, Lithuania

Saulius Sondeckis [Sondezkis] is the outstanding conductor, teacher, citizen, and the most prominent title bearer among the Lithuanian performers. His career record includes more than three thousand concerts in nearly all the European countries, the USA, Japan, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Canada, Egypt, and the Republic of South Africa. He has been applauded at the world’s most famous festivals and concert halls. The maestro has conducted a dozen of youth orchestras at a variety of festivals. In spring this year, Saulius Sondeckis was honoured with an invitation to conduct the Russian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra at the opening concert of the Colon Theatre Hall in Buenos Aires.

Saulius Sondeckis has been conducting since 1955. Initially it was the Student Orchestra of the M.K.Ciurlionis School of Arts. The year 1976 marks the greatest achievement of the orchestra when it won the gold medal at the Herbert von Karajan contest of youth orchestras in Berlin. Klaus Geitel, the famous German critic, has called Sondeckis “a music teacher of the highest order”. Joachim W. Hartnack in his distinguished book Grosser Geiger unserer Zeit (The Great Violinists of Nowadays) has placed the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra among “the three most masterly orchestras of the world”, along with the Musici di Roma and Vladimir Spivakov’s Moscow Virtuosi. Hartnack notes “the infinite virtuosity and musicality” of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra.

In 1988, another world-famous orchestra, namely the St. Petersburg Camerata, was founded by Saulius Sondeckis. Today it is the official St. Petersburg Hermitage Orchestra. Under his leadership, the orchestra has not only toured many countries, including the USA, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, and Poland, but has also recorded several CD's for the series St Petersburg Classics produced by the Sony Classical Recording Corporation.

Professor Saulius Sondeckis and his orchestra have accumulated great repertoire of all epochs and styles and have recorded a lot of CD's and records in Lithuania and abroad. In the 1995/1996 Sony Classical CD Catalogue, the performance Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No.13 recorded by the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, St Petersburg Camerata and Estonia Men Choir under the baton of Saulius Sondeckis received the highest five-star evaluation.

Source: Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra Website
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (July 2005)

Saulius Sondeckis: Short Biography | Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra | Recordings of Vocal Works | Recordings of Instrumental Works

Links to other Sites

Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra (Official Website)