Kirill Karabits (; born 26 December 1976) is a Ukraine conductor.
Biography
Early life
The son of the conductor and composer
Ivan Karabyts, Karabits was born in
Kyiv (then in the
Ukrainian SSR of the
Soviet Union). In his youth, Karabits studied piano, musicology and composition developing an interest in conducting at age 13.
His early teachers included Tatiana Kozlova. In
Kyiv, he studied at the Lysenko Music School, and later at the National Tchaikovsky Music Academy. In 1995, he began studies at the Vienna Musikhochschule and earned a diploma in orchestral conducting after five years of study. He also attended the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, where he was a pupil of
Helmuth Rilling and Peter Gülke. He has done scholarly work on the musical archive of the Berliner Singakademie, such as transcribing the 1784
Johannes Passion of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, which was thought to be lost.
Career
Karabits made his first public conducting appearance aged 19.
He was assistant conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra from 1998 to 2000. He also served as associate conductor of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France from 2002 to 2005. From 2005 to 2007, Karabits was principal guest conductor of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
In October 2006, Karabits made his first conducting appearance with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO), and returned in October 2007,
where both concerts received acclaim.
In November 2007, the BSO announced the appointment of Karabits as their 13th Principal Conductor, after a unanimous vote from the orchestra musicians, effective with the 2009–2010 season.
[Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, "Karabits appointed new Principal Conductor". 29 November 2007.][James Inverne, "Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra names new chief conductor". Gramophone, 23 November 2007.] The BSO appointment marked Karabits' first chief conductorship. Karabits held the title of Principal Conductor-Designate for the 2008–2009 season, with three concerts.
made his first conducting appearance at
The Proms with the BSO in August 2009,
and formally took up the principal conductor post in October 2009.
He was the first Ukrainian conductor to be named principal conductor of a UK orchestra.
In August 2011, Karabits and the BSO agreed on a three-year extension of his contract through the 2015–2016 season.
In 2015, Karabits signed a rolling contract as principal conductor.
Karabits conducted several premieres with the Bournemouth orchestra, including the UK premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Absence,[ BSO, Karabits, The Lighthouse, Poole online review – stealing fire from the gods Peter Quantrill, the Arts Desk, Thursday, 12 November 2020. Accessed 2 April 2023.] 'Unforged' by Carmen Ho (November 2021),[BSO Concert Programme Autumn 2021] Nurymov Symphony No. 2 (19 January 2022),[UK premiere – BSO Concert Programme Winter Spring 2022] Ali-Zadeh Nizami Cosmology (April 2022),[BSO Concert programme Season 2022–23 (October)] and Anna Korsun's Terricone (January 2023).[BSO Concert programme Season 22–23 (January)] Karabits concluded his tenure as the orchestra's chief conductor at the close of the 2023–2024 season, and now has the title of conductor laureate with the orchestra, and serves as artistic director of its Voices from the East project.
Other conducting work
Karabits made his North American conducting debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra in March 2009.
Karabits first conducted the 'I, CULTURE Orchestra' of Poland in 2013 and became its artistic director in 2014.
In November 2014, he made his first guest-conducting appearances with the Staatskapelle Weimar. He first conducted a production at the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar in March 2015. Based on these appearances, in July 2015, the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar named Karabits their next
Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) and chief conductor, effective with the 2016–2017 season, with an initial contract of 3 years.
In June 2018, the DNT and Staatskapelle Weimar announced the scheduled conclusion of Karabits' tenure as GMD of the company in the summer of 2019, following an inability to reach terms on extending his tenure.
In the opera house, Karabits conducted the premiere in Paris of Les orages désirés by Gérard Condé in 2003.[ Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine – CONDE Gérard (1947) Oeuvres page> accessed 24 November 2020.] He made his debut at English National Opera in 2010 in Don Giovanni.[Russ McDonald. Opera, January 2011 Vol.62 No.1 p95.] His Deutsche Oper Berlin guest-conducting debut was with Boris Godunov in 2017.[Carlos Maria Solare. Report from Berlin Opera, October 2017, Vol 68 No.10, p1304.]
Recordings
With the Staatskapelle Weimar he has recorded Strauss and Liszt. With the BSO, Karabits has recorded music of
Rodion Shchedrin for the Naxos label, and music of Aram Khachaturian for the Onyx Classics label.
He recorded a complete cycle of the seven Prokofiev symphonies with the BSO on Onyx from 2013 to 2015, which included the symphonic fragment of 1902, the original version of the fourth, and the alternative ending for the seventh.
[Booklet notes for Onyx 4137, 4139, 4147 and 4153 with interview of Karabits by Daniel Jaffé.] A series of CDs with music by composers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine, such as
Gara Garayev, Boris Lyatoshynsky, Chary Nurymov and
Avet Terterian has appeared on the
Chandos Records label.
[ Fanny Charles. Karabits and the BSO – a new chapter. Blackmore Vale Magazine, 17 January 2023. accessed 4 April 2023.] His performance of
Sardanapalo by Liszt in Weimar was later issued on CD by Audite.
[Sardanapalo, Liszt review. Christopher Webber. Opera, May 2019 Vol 70, No.5, p629-30.]
External links
