Aziza Sadikova

Aziza Sadikova received her first piano and composition lessons at the age of five at the Special Music School for the Gifted in her hometown of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She later studied composition at the Tashkent State Conservatory in Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s class and continued her studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, England (Bachelor of Music) and at Trinity College in London (Master of Music). Sadikova explores diverse areas of new music: from experimentation with unconventional instrumental techniques to the use of complex structural and rhythmic components – for example in A Letter, 1921, Prague for piano four hands, video and typewriter (2012), Silberklang for soprano and chamber ensemble (2016) or the chamber opera Alles über Sally (Everything About Sally, 2015). Her work is also influenced by the emotional power of Romantic music (Untitled for choir and orchestra and Concerto for cello and orchestra, both 2016) and borrows from textures in the neo-baroque style (Variation for piano quartet, 2011, or cadenzas to cello concertos by C. P. E. Bach).

She has collaborated with musicians from the UK, USA, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Poland, Italy and Japan. Her music has been performed at festivals including: the BBC Proms, Bachfest Leipzig, Wien Modern, Philharmonische Akademie-Konzerte Hamburg, Young Euro Classic, Kassel Music Days, Audi Vorsprung-Festival, Aspekte Salzburg, Randspiele, Klangwerkstatt Berlin, Nuova Musica Treviso, Uckermärkische Musikwochen, Sound Source Festival, Southbank Festival London, Theaterformen Braunschweig, Klangzeit Festival Münster, reMusik Festival St Petersburg. Conductors of her music include such figures as Kent Nagano, Omer Meir Wellber, Jonathan Stockhammer, Joolz Gale, Elias Grandy, Rüdiger Bohn, Manuel Nawri, Miguel Pérez Iñesta, Jonas Janulevicius, Johannes X. Schachtner and David Robert Coleman. She has worked with authors Arno Geiger and Jens Schroth, and composed for Simone Rubino (percussion), Julian Steckel and Konstantin Manaev (cello), Yury Revich and Thomas Gould (violin) and Natalia Pschenitschnikowa (vocals).

Aziza Sadikova has also worked with numerous ensembles and orchestras in Germany, including Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, members of the ensemble of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, the Philharmonisches Orchester der Stadt Heidelberg, the Berliner Camerata or the ensemble unitedberlin. Other collaborations have taken her to the VMU Chamber Orchestra in Lithuania, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic and the Britten Sinfonia (UK), Ensemble Nostri Temporis (Ukraine) and the Moscow Contemporary Ensemble.

Sadikova’s commissions include the orchestral work Marionettes for the BBC Proms (2020), the opera Alles über Sally for Ensemble Quillo in collaboration with the then dramaturg of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Jens Schroth, and actor Patrick Wengenroth (Schaubühne Berlin, 2015), and the children’s opera Sterntaler (2014). For the Berliner Camerata she created cadenzas for the CD “Der Bach” on the ClassicClips label (2014); from the Zafraan Ensemble (Berlin) she received the commission for Stimme im Schatten (Voice in the Shadows, 2013). As part of her Kafka project, she composed duos and quartets for the Berlin concert series “Unerhörte Musik” (“Unheard Music”). Commissioned by the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra under General Music Director Kent Nagano, she composed Silberklang based on a text by Kurt Schwitters (2016).

In 2017 Julian Steckel premiered the Cello Concerto by Aziza Sadikova with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the City of Heidelberg conducted by Elias Grandy. In 2019, the percussion concerto Lichtscherben (Shards of Light) was premiered with soloist Simone Rubino and the SWR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joseph Bastian. In the same year, a compositional contribution to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Art of Fugue was commissioned by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; likewise for a song recital “Beethoven-Sadikova” at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg as well as an experimental opera project for the Ring of the Nibelung, a Chinese-German cooperation in collaboration with the Berlin director Anna Peschke.

Aziza Sadikova’s works have been performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Uferstudios Berlin, the Radialsystem Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie and the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, the Staatstheater Ingolstadt, the Stadthalle Heidelberg, the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, the Münster Theatre, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the BBC Proms, the Southbank Centre in London, the Pit Theatre at London’s Barbican Centre, the Meyerhold Centre in Moscow, the Philharmonic Hall in Kaunas and the Berwald Hall in Stockholm. Her music has been featured on BBC Radio 3, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, MDR KULTUR, rbbKultur and the Moscow TV Culture Channel. BBC World Service featured her in the TV documentary “100 Women”.

Aziza Sadikova attended composition workshops and master classes with Johannes Schöllhorn, Friedrich Goldmann, Mark Pekarsky, Giya Kancheli, Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Gerard McBurney, Simon McBurney, Joel Bons, Walter Zimmermann, Frederik Rzewski and Klaus Huber. Her work has been awarded several prizes, including the Art Advancement Prize of the Brandenburg Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs’ Art Advancement Award and the European Composers’ Prize.

This biography may be reprinted free of charge in programme booklets with the following credit: Reprinted with kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski.