Gennady Rozhdestvensky made his debut at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1951, conducting Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. He was its principal conductor between 1964 and 1970, and held the joint position of Artistic Director and Chief Conductor for the Jubilee season 2000 / 01. He has also held positions with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra (1961 – 74) and Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra (1983 – 91); when he took up his post at the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, in 1974, he was the first Soviet conductor to be appointed principal conductor of a Western orchestra. He has also served as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1978 – 81) and the Wiener Symphoniker (1980 – 82) and has held positions at the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra of Japan and Moscow Chamber Opera. He has conducted at The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, and Opéra national de Paris Bastille, among many others, and has participated in dozens of world premieres of newly discovered or newly composed works, some of which were dedicated to him: works by composers including Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Sir John Tavener, Alfred Schnittke, and Rodion Shchedrin. Gennady Rozhdestvensky is an Honorary Member of the Royal Swedish Academy and the Royal Academy of Music, an Officier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, and the recipient of the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun and an honorary CBE for his services to music. He is one of the most recorded conductors of all time.