Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (born 6 July 1937, Gorky) is a Soviet (until 1962) and Icelandic (since 1969) pianist and conductor. He lives in Switzerland. Seven-time Grammy Award winner.
Born into the family of the famous pop pianist David Ashkenazy, his mother was Evstolia Grigorievna (maiden name Plotnova).
He showed musical abilities early and in 1945 entered the Central Music School, where he studied with Anaida Sumbatyan.
Ashkenazy's first recital in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, composed exclusively of works by Chopin, took place in April 1955, the same year he entered the Conservatoire in the class of Lev Oborin (his assistant in the class was B. Y. Zemlyansky, whose contribution to his development as a pianist is highly appreciated by Vladimir Ashkenazy himself). V. Ashkenazy himself considers his main teachers to be A. Sumbatyan, L. Oborin and B. Zemlyansky. Zemlyansky.
The following year the pianist achieved his first major international success: he was awarded second prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw and first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. In 1957 his first foreign tour took place in Germany.
In 1962 Ashkenazy won first prize at the Second International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, sharing it with the Englishman John Ogdon.
A year later, after his debut in London, Ashkenazy decided not to return to his homeland and settled in England with his wife, the Icelandic pianist Torun Sofia Johannesdottir (a graduate of the Moscow Conservatoire) and their son. In 1963 in London he was awarded the Harriet Cohen International Music Prize.
In 1969 the family moved to Iceland, where Ashkenazy began his conducting career. Over the years he has conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (from 1987 to 1994), the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Orchestra and others. Today Ashkenazy continues his musical career and tours extensively throughout the world as a pianist and conductor.
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Gramophone magazine.
