Yekaterinburg has hosted five editions of the Orchestra Academy so far: in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Famous musicians and teachers have been training the young artists, conducting master classes, group and orchestral rehearsals.
The Academy's calling card is the Tchaikovsky International Youth Orchestra which is formed out of its interns. The collective’s repertoire always includes the pieces by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - the composer, whose creative work takes pride of place in the world music heritage, and whose biography is connected with the Ural town of Alapaevsk.
The collective’s live performances make an important component of the Middle Urals cultural life. The Orchestra performed in Yekaterinburg and the towns of Sverdlovsk region, including Alapaevsk, Kamensk-Uralsky, Krasnoturyinsk and Revda; it represented the International Orchestra Academy at the Classics Over the Volga Festival (Togliatti, Samara Region), and performed on stage of the Konzerthaus Berlin as part of the Young Euro Classic Festival that featured the best youth orchestras of the world (2017). Traditionally, the concerts of the Tchaikovsky International Youth Orchestra on stage of the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic in Yekaterinburg have been an important part of the cultural program of the INNOPROM International Industrial Fair.
In 2018, the Summer Orchestra Academy was awarded among the best projects of the interregional cooperation following the results of the Russian-German Year of Municipal and Regional Partnerships. Alexander Kolotursky, CEO of the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic and Tatiana Reхroth, Managing Director of RCCR Projects GmbH, received the award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany Heiko Maas and his Russian colleague Sergey Lavrov.
The year of 2019 saw another landmark collaborative project of the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic’s International Cultural Centre and RCCR Projects GmbH – the Russian-German Music Academy. In June 2019, on the eve of the Summer Orchestra Academy in Yekaterinburg, the Ural Youth Symphony Orchestra together with the Northwest German Philharmonic under the artistic direction of Frank Beermann gave a series of concerts for the German public. The combined orchestra of 125 musicians performed the grandiose Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony) by Richard Strauss; Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Sergei Rachmaninov (with Yuri Favorin as soloist), and the German premiere of In the Hall of the Mountain... work by the contemporary Russian composer Olga Victorova. The concerts in the towns of Herford, Hamm and Paderborn (North Rhine-Westphalia) were sponsored by the LWL-Kulturstiftung cultural foundation and the Friends of the Russian-German Music Academy Society, and held under the auspices of the Russian Seasons in Germany international cultural project.
In 2020, one of the leading representatives of the German conducting school, Lothar Zagrosek will run the Orchestra Academy as its Artistic Director. Pablo Hernan, the renowned violinist, ensemble player and performer of chamber music, and Christian-Friedrich Dallmann, professor of the Berlin University of the Arts, who has collaborated with the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic since 2017, will be the mentors for the young artists of the symphony orchestra.
The Orchestra Academy - 2020 is timed to coincide with the Be@thoven International Music Festival. For the first time in the Academy’s history, its interns will have an opportunity to perform as ensemble soloists and orchestra artists in the programme of a large-scale event of a global importance. Their concert within the Tchaikovsky International Youth Orchestra will take place on the Last Night of the Festival, on November 30, 2020. Together with the famous Yekaterinburg Philharmonic Choir, the renowned German and Russian singers, they will conclude the Year of Beethoven in Yekaterinburg with a performance of the composer's epoch-making Ninth Symphony under the baton of Lothar Zagrosek.
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