Vladimir Tarnopolski, composer (1955, Dnipro, Ukraine). Since 1973 until 2022 he studied and worked in Moscow, since April 2022 he lives in Munich.

He studied composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Edison Denisov and Nikolai Sidelnikov. His graduate work, the Concerto for Cello (1980) was selected by the prominent Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky for a series of concert programs, titled "From the History of Russian Music". Since then, works by Tarnopolski are regularly performed in Russia and abroad by numerous famous musicians, such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Reinbert de Leeuw, Valery Gergiev, Ingo Metzmacher, Vladimir Jurowski, Sylvain Cambreling, Alexander Lazarev, Vasily Sinaysky, Natalia Gutman, Yury Bashmet, Jens–Peter Maintz and many others.

Tarnopolski is a frequent guest in many Western contemporary music festivals, such as: Almeida Festival London, Beethovenfest Bonn, The Berliner Festwochen, Dresdner Tage fur Neue Musik, Frankfurter Musikfest, Holland Festival, Hommage aux Russes Paris, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klangspuren festival in Austria, La Biennale di Venezia, Make Music Together in Boston, Manca festival in Nice/Monaco, The Mannes festival in New York, Münchener Biennale, The Schleswig-Holstein Musikfest, Sonic Boom New York Festival, Tage fur Neue Musik Zürich, Warsaw Autumn, Wien Modern, The World Music Days of the ISCM and many others.

Tarnopolski has written pieces on commission for some of the world's leading orchestras, among them the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble InterContemporain, Musikfabrik, Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble of Soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre, Klangforum Wien and others. His stage works were premiered at the Münchener Biennale, Beethovenfest Bonn, Barbican Hall London, Rencontres Musicales d'Evian, Contemporary Dance Festival Netherlands, Bergen Festival and others.

Vladimir Tarnopolski is the author of several operas, many orchestral, chamber and vocal works. The musical matter of his compositions is associated, first of all, with a special sonorous quality, some kind of a sound magma, developed on the basis of a complexly constructed sound material, which abolishes the juxtaposition between consonance and dissonance, sound and noise, harmony and timbre, as well as electronic and acoustic instruments. At the same time, Tarnopolski's compositions often have a pronounced critical political discourse (opera Beyond the Shadow, Welt voll Irrsinn, Chevengur, Tabula Russia, Das alte Jahr vergangen ist:2022, Out of Step/Out of Time, etc.)

Tarnopolski is one of the most active reformers of the musical life of Moscow in the post-Soviet period. He was one of the initiators of ACM, the Association of Contemporary Music in Moscow (1989), which represented a group of composers, who reacted against the official Soviet cultural philosophy of "socialist realism". In 1993 he founded the Centre for Contemporary Music, the first of its kind in Russia, and the Studio for New Music Ensemble.

In 1994 Tarnopolski founded the Moscow Forum, an annual International Festival of Contemporary Music, the main focus of which is to overcome self-isolation and to integrate Russian music into the European and global cultural context. The Moscow Forum is the only festival in Russia that aims not only to reveal the progressive development of musical art, but also to reveal its political discourse. His long-term projects "Red Wheel. The Unknown Russian Music of the XX century", "Russia-Germany. Chapters of the XX Century Music History", "Freedom of Sound!", "Europe through the eyes of Russians. Russia through the eyes of Europeans", “Ghost of the Future” and others have obtained recognition in Russia and abroad.

For many years Tarnopolski has carried out a large-scale series of concerts of West-European music in Russia. Several European composers have been his guests in Moscow, presenting their pieces at the concerts and giving workshops for young composers at the Conservatory. Tarnopolski conducted the German, French, Italian, Austrian, the Netherlands Festivals in Moscow, which have become the important musical events in Russia.

Since 1992 until February 2022 Tarnopolski was a professor of composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. In 2003, he founded the Department of Contemporary Music and became its first head. Many his students have won prizes at international competitions for young composers. He has held numerous composition seminars in Russia, Austria, France, Germany, Great Britten, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, USA and other countries, including such universities as Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and others. Vladimir Tarnopolski has been the first Russian composer who was invited as a docent to the Darmstadt International Courses for New Music (2010). Tarnopolski is also the founder of the Jurgenson International Competition for Young Composers (since 2001), Tchaikovsky Conservatory International Competition for Young Composers (since 2018). As a member of jury he is a frequent guest of many international competitions for composers, such as ISCM World Music Days festival, Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam), Orpheus Radio competition (Russia), Witold Lutoslawski competition (Warsaw), , Goffredo Petrassi competition (Italy), the International Piano Competition of Orleans (France),  The Rivers Awards International Composition Competition (Shanghai), Gesualdo Reloaded (Italy), several competitions in the USA and many others.

Tarnopolski's musical compositions have been awarded many prizes including the Dmitri Shostakovich Prize (Russia), the Paul Hindemith Prize (Germany), and International Rostrum of Composers award. As composer-in-residence, he has been invited to major institutions of contemporary art and science, among them is Civitella Ranieri (Italy), and the Berlin Institute for Advanced Studies (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).

Tarnopolski is currently a visiting professor at the Hochschule Munich. He is a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts.

updated on March 17, 2023