Biography
Lauded for his creative and intelligent artistic leadership, Mark Kadin is finishing his sixth season as a Music Director of the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra: a prominent Eastern European orchestra with 75-year history.
His inspiring work with the orchestra is the rare combination of exceptional musicianship, brilliant intellect, and generosity of spirit, which leads to unforgettable performances of sincere emotional power. Together, they have built up an extensive and highly regarded media library of live concert recordings in recent years. Mark Kadin’s concerts with the BNR Symphony Orchestra are regularly broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Swedish and Danish Radio, Portuguese National and Spanish National Radio, Musiq 3 (Belgium), Bulgarian National TV, BBC 3 and Euroradio Premium Concerts.
Mark Kadin was also Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Krasnoyarsk Symphony Orchestra 2004-2014, Resident Conductor of three other great Russian orchestras: the Russian National Orchestra 1997-2004, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra 1994-2004 and the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra 1999-2003. He has maintained a regular relationship with many orchestras in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia and New Zealand and has worked with top artists such as Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Kristof Barati, Simon Trpčeski, Dmitry Khvorostovsky, Sumi Jo, Mikhail Pletnev, Nikolay Lugansky, Alena Baeva, Lucas Geniushas, Rafael Aguirre, Johan Dalene and many others.
Mark was born in Ukraine and started his musical life in Kharkiv. He studied conducting at the Russian Academy of Music in Moscow. While still a student he began his conducting career in 1990 as an Assistant conductor of the Moscow Ensemble of Contemporary Music, the “Young Russia” State Symphony Orchestra and Russian National Orchestra. He worked with Mstislav Rostropovich, Michael Tilson-Thomas, Kent Nagano, Valery Gergiev, Evgeny Svetlanov, Alexander Lazarev and Paavo Berglund.
His debut with the BNR Symphony Orchestra took place twenty years ago (2003), which led to regular cooperation. He took the lead at the BNR SO in 2017 and from his first season Mark set out new directions for the orchestra's further development, by stepping up efforts to attract new listeners and introducing new program concepts, a global plan for recordings and social activity. In 2018 Mark and the BNR SO performed for the first time at the World Orchestra Series in South Korea, with concerts in Daegu and Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul.
He conducts a diverse and thrilling range of repertoire in Sofia over the 2022/23 season, performing works in their main concert series by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Ravel, Cruixent Saint-Saëns, De Falla, Bernstein, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak and Rachmaninov. The season with BNR SO will also include a tour to prestigious Balkan festivals: Varna Summer and March Music Days. At the heart of Mark's activity with the BNR Symphony Orchestra is a broad list of recordings. Among recent works are a serie of symphonies of Haydn, music by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Reger, Elgar, Stravinsky, music by composers of the Russian and Bulgarian Avant Garde, “forgotten” during the Communist period. But the promotion of the orchestra's activities is not limited to concerts and recordings. Mark Kadin is the author and host of the first Bulgarian podcast about classical music 'Classical Question'.
During his collaboration with the orchestra his innovative ideas, glittering interpretations, creative energy and endeavours to expand the audience were highly praised and rewarded by Bulgarian culture and media institutions. The last one is the 2022 National Award Crystal Lyra - for achievements in the performing art.
As an Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Krasnoyarsk Symphony Orchestra, Mark was responsible for the success and growth of the orchestra. In addition to conducting 40 symphonic programs every season, he established a groundbreaking Summer Open Air Festival in Krasnoyarsk and other cities in the Siberian region which were attended by tens of thousands of spectators. He led the orchestra on three Asian tours to China and South Korea with concerts in prestigious concert halls including the Seoul Arts Center.
As a Resident Conductor of the Russian National Symphony, the Moscow Radio Symphony and the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, Mark has conducted annually about 30 concerts in Russia, notably leading the RNO and Moscow Virtuosi CO on European tours to the France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany including concerts at the Kölner Philharmonie, Tonhalle Düsseldorf and the Munich Herkulessaal.
His guest engagements include the Filharmonia Artur Rubinstein, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gavle Symphony, Polish Wieniawski Philharmonic, Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, Moravian and Sofia Philharmonic, Roma Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, Moscow State and Russian Philharmonic, Queensland Symphony, Liepaja, Kaunas and Klaipeda Symphony Orchestras, Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Turkey and Istanbul Symphony Orchestra, Israel Sinfonietta, Transylvanian Philharmonic, Gyeonggi Philharmonic, Yucatan Symphony, OFEQ and Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra in Mexico, National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica, Christchurch Symphony and Parana Symphony Orchestra, Xiamen Philharmonic and others.
Alongside the core repertoire (including Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Rimski-Korsakov, Sibelius, Mahler, Bartok, Stravinsky) Mark Kadin maintains a strong affinity to rarely heard works by Stenhammar, Kurpinsky, Walton, Silvestrov, Kancheli, Schnittke, maintaining a close relationship with new music having conducted more than 100 works written after 1960: “He likes to do this type of conceptual, thematic, genre-summarizing concerts, with the aim of intriguing the audience and the orchestra in different ways.” - Decrescendo.net
Mark lives in Sofia and is a resident of Bulgaria, he is fluent in 5 languages: Bulgarian, English, Russian, Ukrainian and Spanish.