Pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy has signed a contract to serve as musical director for the NHK Symphony Orchestra for three years, starting September 2004.
At a recent news conference in Tokyo, Ashkenazy said that he plans to bring "as much variety as possible" to the NHK ensemble to help it compete with the capital's seven other professional orchestras.
Speaking of his experience conducting the NHK Symphony Orchestra in five concerts in October 2000, he praised the ensemble for its preparedness and ability to play various types of music, including Russian, German and French.
During his three-year tenure, Ashkenazy will be in Japan for about seven weeks every year and conduct the orchestra in some 18 annual concerts, said Kazuhiro Tabata, administrative chief of the orchestra.
Ashkenazy will also lead the orchestra in a few overseas concert tours.
The Russian-born Ashkenazy said that Russian music will not necessarily be his priority, although he added that Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich have contributed a lot to "human spirituality."
Ashkenazy, 65, left the Soviet Union when he was 26 to live in the West. His musical interests are wide and varied, he said.
The term for the orchestra's current musical director, Charles Dutoit, will expire next August. He will thereafter be honorary musical director. Ashkenazy will serve as the orchestra's musical adviser in the year leading up to the start of his directorship, Tabata added.