Composer, conductor, pianist and teacher,
Vladimir Genin was born in Moscow in 1958 to
a family with ties to the arts.
His father, Mikhail Genin, was a musician and writer.
His grandfather, Iosif Shpinel, painter and professor of the Institute of Cinema, contributed to more than 60 films as Mosfilm Studio’s art director, acknowledged masterworks of Russian cinema, including Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky, among them.
Genin graduated from Moscow Conservatory in the Composition class of Prof. Roman Ledenev and Piano class of Prof. Ilia Klyachko. Of great importance in the musician's development, more decisive, perhaps, than his Conservatory studies, was his friendship of many years with Georgy Sviridov, a pupil of Shostakovich and one of Russia's leading composers.
His works have been performed by symphony orchestras, numerous chamber ensembles and choirs in Europe, Russia and the USA, including the Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Opera Theatre St. Petersburg and Rotterdam's Philharmonic Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, Graz Philharmonic Orchestra and Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna under Oksana Lyniv, INSO Lemberg under V. Protasov, the Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Opera Theatre "New Opera", The Menuhin Academy Soloists Switzerland. They have been performed at international festivals in Moscow, Lviv and Belgrade, appeared on CDs and are published by several publishers in Germany and Russia, including Sikorski Music Publishers Hamburg, Verlag Neue Musik Berlin, Ries & Erler Berlin.
In 1987 Genin composed The Plaint of Andrei Bogolubsky, Great Prince of Vladimir, a Mystery Play for Soloists and Chorus, commissioned by the Choral Music Theatre of the City of Vladimir. The Plaint had over 60 productions in Russia and was performed during the celebrations of the Millennium of the Christening of Russia as well as on Vladimir Chamber Choir’s concert tour of the United States. In 2012, in connection with the 900th anniversary of the birth of St Andrei Bogolyubsky, the work was again in the repertoire of the Chamber Choir.
The instrumentations of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death and Sunless vocal cycles, commissioned from Genin by the Russian star-baritone Dmitry Hvorostovsky, were performed under the baton of Valery Gergiev in St. Petersburg (1993, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra), and in Rotterdam and Brussels (1998, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra).
The film The Cosmonaut's Letter (2002, Germany) with an original soundtrack by Genin recorded by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a successful release in Germany, was shown on television in Germany and Austria, and is available on DVD. The many music pieces commissioned by Sonoton creative sound solutions Munich can be heard on many TV channels of Europe, the USA, Japan, South Africa, and Australia as documentary soundtracks.
In 2008 a CD of Genin’s In C est. 4/4: Four Chamber Compositions for Four Interpreters was published by RCD Prague.
In 2012 Olga Domnina recorded a CD of the piano cycle Seven Melodies for the Dial, written by Genin especially for this remarkable musician. The release, from the Dutch label Challenge Records, has met with considerable acclaim, receiving unprecedented top marks from the German classical music monthly Piano News for both the standard of performance and the quality of sound.
Vladimir Genin's new CD, a vocal cycle based on Charles Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal (2013), has been chosen "Disc of the Month" in January 2015 by the US classical music review MusicWeb.
Malafemmina, or Awful Beauty Tragedia Buffa (opera in two acts) was composed in 2013, commissioned by a patron of the arts, who wishes to remain anonymous.
A multimedia project by Vladimir Genin together with the Nodelman Quartet Threnody for the Victims in Ukraine to commemorate the murdered in the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution has attracted a lot of attention in Germany.
The commissioned 2019 chamber opera Das Knabenherz von Pyrmont (The Boy's Heart of Pyrmont) was released as a film opera on DVD in 2020 and premiered in Bad Pyrmont in 2021.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians contains an article on Vladimir Genin, who now resides in Munich.
He occasionally orchestrates filmscores for the important German film composers.
He teaches piano, chamber music, composition, orchestration, and prepares young artists for competitions and studies at conservatories and universities. His students are prizewinners of national and international competitions. He regularly teaches at the Austrian Master Classes at the Castle Zell an der Pram.
2022 - 2023 Genin won numerous awards at the International Music Video Awards "Best Jazz Track", "Best Music Video" "Best Musical Short Film" for the Films "Dreams", "Punto Coronata", "Coronata In Blue" and "Ukrainan Madonna".
As an orchestrator, he has arranged music for a number of German, Austrian, Swiss, French and Belgian films.
He is also the artistic director of the concert series "erstKlassiK", which he founded in Hallbergmoos in 2008.
Биография на русском языке в Википедии