Nizhny Novgorod

Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's... country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Ashkenazy was born in Gorky, Soviet Union , to the pianist and composer David Ashkenazi and to the actress Yevstolia Grigorievna, born Plotnova. His father was Jewish and his mother was the daughter of a family of Russian Orthodox peasants. He began playing piano at the age of six and, showing prodigious talent, was accepted to the Central Music School at age eight studying with Anaida Sumbatyan. Ashkenazy went on to graduate from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with Lev Oborin and Boris Zemliansky, winning second prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1955 and the first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1956.
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Anton Stepanovich Arensky , was a Russian composer of Romantic classical music, a pianist and a professor of music. Arensky was born in Novgorod,... Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine. With his mother and father, he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1879, where he studied composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. After graduating from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1882, Arensky became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students there were Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Gretchaninov. In 1895 Arensky returned to Saint Petersburg as the director of the Imperial Choir, a post for which he had been recommended by Mily Balakirev. Arensky retired from this position in 1901, spending his remaining time as a pianist, conductor, and composer. Arensky died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Perkjärvi, Finland. It is alleged that drinking and gambling undermined his health. The Antarctic Arensky Glacier was named after him.
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Dmitry Lobkov is a Russian speedskater who specialises in the shortest distances, with the 500 metres being his favourite. At the 2004 World Single... Distance Championships in Seoul he achieved the silver medal at this distance, only allowing Jeremy Wotherspoon to be faster. He became Russian Sprint Champion three times in a row, and was, because of his recently shown progress, a favourite to win an Olympic medal in the 500 metres distance at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. But in the summer of 2005, when his trainer Sergey Klevchenya organised a football-game, Lobkov got injured. His preparation for the Olympics was therefore too short. In his favourite 500 metres distance Lobkov ranked himself in fourteenth place. On 12 January 2007 in Kolomna, Lobkov improved his 2003 personal best of 34.51 seconds, set at the Olympic rink in Salt Lake City, down to a record level of 34.35. At the time, only the two Japanese skaters Joji Kato and Hiroyasu Shimizu had ever skated faster.
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Natalia Mikhailovna Vodianova is a Russian model and philanthropist who now permanently resides in the United Kingdom. Born in Gorky, Soviet Union ,... Natalia Vodianova grew up in a poor district of the city with her mother and two half sisters, one of whom has cerebral palsy. As a teenager, Vodianova helped her mother sell fruit on the street and later set up her own fruit stand with a friend to help her family out of poverty. Vodianova's father walked out on the family when she was a toddler, and she did not have any further contact with him until after she had become famous. At the age of 15, Vodianova enrolled in a modelling academy. By the age of 17, Vodianova had moved to Paris, and signed with Viva Models. Vodianova has achieved considerable success as a runway, editorial and advertising campaign model. To date, Vodianova has walked in more than 175 runway shows for U.S.
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Igor Mikhailovich Zhukov is a Russian pianist, conductor and sound engineer. Zhukov was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1936 but his family moved to... Moscow in the following year. Four years later, they were evacuated to Vyatka as a result of the Second World War. After the war, they returned to Moscow, where Zhukov studied in the Conservatory in 1955, studying first with Emil Gilels and then, in 1955, with Heinrich Neuhaus. He graduated in 1960, having won second prize in the Long-Thibaud Piano Competition in Paris. Apart from a career as a pianist, Zhukov also conducted his own ensemble - the Moscow Chamber Orchestra until his retirement from conducting in 1994, and was the pianist of the long-running Zhukov Piano Trio which was founded in 1963 and continued performing until 1980. The trio was noted for its "Historic Concerts" which featured repertoire spanning the 17th to the 20th centuries. Zhukov has made recordings on the Melodiya/CBS label among others .
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Sergei Mikhailovich Nakariakov is a Russian virtuoso trumpeter who came to prominence in the late 1990s. He released his first CD recording in 1992... at the age of 15. Sergei Nakariakov has recorded works by composers such as Joseph Haydn, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, J. B. Neruda, Mozart, Telemann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky. He has recorded with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hugh Wolff, and the Philharmonia conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy among many others. In 2004 he was portrayed in Jan Schmidt-Garre's film No More Wunderkind. Nakariakov's recordings include: Nakariakov also has made several recordings performing on the flugelhorn. In his album Concertos for Trumpet in 1999, Nakariakov plays music transcribed for the trumpet from violin, viola, and cello concertos. He plays the flugelhorn for the famous Cello Concerto No. 1 by Haydn. In his album No Limit in 2000, Nakariakov plays Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, originally for cello and orchestra, in a transcription for the flugelhorn.
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