Second Conductor and Assistant to the Chief Conductor

Oleg Ptashnikov

Oleg Ptashnikov was born in Dnepropetrovsk in the Ukraine. He completed his studies at the Gnessin Academy of Music in Moscow with Oleg Boschnjakowitsch and Natalia Guljanitskaja with a diploma in concert pianism and a further diploma in musicology. During his studies, he worked as a solo repetiteur, conductor, arranger and composer at various Moscow theatres.

This was followed in Germany by postgraduate studies in piano at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich with Olaf Dreßler and orchestral conducting with Ekkehard Klemm at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden. Oleg Ptashnikov has been a member of the ensemble of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz as conductor since the 2002/2003 season. Since then, he has conducted over 500 performances of more than 70 different productions, with his repertoire ranging from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Hans Werner Henze.

As a guest conductor, he has conducted the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. From 2014‒2019, Oleg Ptashnikov was Musical Assistant to Mariss Jansons, including at the Salzburg Festival productions of Shostakovich’s »Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk« and Tchaikovsky’s »Queen of Spades«. In 2024, he made his debut at the Salzburg Summer Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic in Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera »The Idiot« and at the Vienna State Opera in the revival of Mozart’s »Don Giovanni«.