Kirill Kondrashin

He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory under another Soviet conductor Boris Khaikin (who was just 3 years older than Kondrashin himself) and conducted at the Maliy Theatre in Leningrad from 1938 to 1942 and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow from 1943. He was also the artistic director of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra from 1960 to 1975 before leaving the Soviet Union in 1978 by demanding political asylum from the Dutch Government while in Holland. In the International Tchaikovsky Competition, he was the conductor for Van Cliburn, who won that competition. After the competition, he toured to United States with Cilburn and became the first conductor to visit America since the Cold War began. He took the post of Permanent Guest Conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1978 and remained in that position until his death from a heart attack in 1981.