Dimitris Botinis: The Greek Conductor of Russia

Born in 1986 in Moscow to a musical family, acclaimed Dimitris Botinis is one of the youngest Greek conductors and rising stars of opera and symphonic conducting. At the age of 5 he began studying to play the violin, later the viola and classical guitar. As a violin player, he graduated with honors from the Municipal Conservatory of Patras (Greece, 2006). He had already began from the age of 14 to practice symphonic conducting under the guidance of his father.

At the age of nineteen Botinis won the Antonio Pedrotti International Conducting Competition (Italy, Trento, 2006), where he received both special prizes – the Audience Award and the Prize of the Members of the Pedrotti Association.

As an opera conductor he made his debut in 2010 at the St. Petersburg State Conservatoire Opera and Ballet Theatre with Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanthe. In 2011, Botinis graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory with a specialty in opera and symphony conducting (class of Prof. Y. Simonov).

He has worked with such ensembles as the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic, the Symphony Orchestra of the State Academic Capella of St. Petersburg (as part of the XVI Musical Olympus festival in 2011), the Croatian Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the Podlachia Opera and Philharmonic (Poland), the Liszt-Wagner Orchestra in Budapest, the Haydn Orchestra in Bolzano, the State Symphony Orchestras of Athens and Thessaloniki, the National Symphony Orchestra of Greece, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Athens and the Patras Orchestra among others.

In December 2011 he won the 1^st prize for opera and symphony conducting at the 1st All-Russian Competition (Moscow) re-established since 1988.

He is currently an assistant to the Principal Conductor of the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic, while his most recent conducting performance was with the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra in the Concert Hall in St. Petersburg.

Stella Tsolakidou

Source: Greek Reporter