Dimitri Kitaenko is one of the great conductors of our time. He conducts the prestigious orchestras from Europe, America and Asia. Honorary conductor of the Cologne Gurzenich Orchestra since 2009, his collaboration with the orchestra has spanned decades and produced outstanding CD recordings. Their complete recording of Shostakovich's symphonies received prestigious awards and their Prokofiev cycle was enthusiastically received. Their Tchaikovsky cycle was concluded at the beginning of 2014 with the Seventh Symphony and the Third Piano Concerto and is already regarded as a benchmark recording. This most successful artistic collaboration continues with a Rachmaninoff CD cycle. Dimitri Kitaenko and the Gurzenich Orchestra will furthermore soon release Tchaikovsky's one-act opera "Iolanta". Kitaenko  has released countless CDs with a range of orchestras, including the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and the Danish National Orchestra. 

For his outstanding recordings, Dimitri Kitaenko will receive the "Lifetime Achievement Award" of the ICMA (International Classical Music Awards) in March 2015. Dimitri Kitaenko has been principal guest conductor of the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra since 2012 and is touring Spain with the orchestra in February 2015. In the 2014|15 season he will also perform with orchestras including the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Hamburg, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Dresden Philharmonic and he will conduct Qatar Philharmonic's Brahms Cycle. In 2016 he will give a number of concerts with the leading Symphony Orchestras of Japan.

Born in Leningrad, Dimitri Kitaenko studied at the Glinka School of Music and the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory before leaving to study with Leo Ginzburg in Moscow and Hans Swarowsky and Karl Osterreicher in Vienna. In 1969 he won a prize at the first International Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin and was appointed principal conductor of the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow at the age of twenty-nine. In 1976 he assumed the post of principal conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic. In 1990 Dimitri Kitaenko came to the West, successively becoming principal conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as principal guest conductor of the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a juror of the International Malko Competition he is committed to supporting the next generation of conductors.