VLADIMIR KIRADJIEV majored at the Prof. Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in orchestral an choral conducting and composition. He also participated in the master classes of Kurt Mazur in Weimar (1983), Franco Ferrara in Siena (1985) and Karl Oesterreicher in Varna (1987). In 1988 he was invited by Prof. Oesterreicher to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and has settled permanently in Viena since 1989. He was artistic director of the Vienna Residenzorchester (1991-1994). His international engagements began at the beginning of the 1990s: at the Lucerne Festival he conducted music by Alfred Schnittke, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin he was assistant to Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in Boris Godunov and to Jiří Kout in Eugene Onegin, and he also conducted Mussorgsky’s Marriage. Since 1996 he has been a regular guest at the opera festival in Sigulda (Latvia), and has also appeared at the Warsaw Autumn, Wiener Festwochen, and Musica Electronica Nova in Wroclaw. From 1994 to 2011 he was the music director of the festival in Roettingen (Germany). Between 2008 and 2013 he was artistic director of the Rzeszów Philharmonic (Poland), in 2013/2014 he was guest conductor at Opera na Zamku in Szczecin (Poland). He has also appeared as a guest artist at the opera houses in Riga, Graz, the Sofia Opera and Ballet, the Komische Oper and the Metropole Theatre in Berlin, the Volkstheater Rostock, the Tatar National Opera Kazan, as well as at almost all opera houses in Poland.
He has partnered on stage with Anna Netrebko, Elīna Garanča, Marcelo Álvarez, Asmik Grigoryan, Maya Kowalewska, Nadia Krasteva, Rafał Blechacz, Krzysztof Jablonski, Ludmil Angelov, Sharon Kam, Andrei Korsakov to name but a few. He has collaborated in his career with the opera directors Yuri Alexandrov, Michał Znaniecki and Peter Sellers.
He has conducted renowned orchestras such as the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Lithuanian State Orchestra, the Latvian National Philharmonic, the Sofia Philharmonic, I pomeriggi musicali, the Hungarian Festival Orchestra, the philharmonic orchestras of Gdańsk, Lublin, Wrocław, Lodz, Bialystok and Katowice, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Klangforum Vienna, Slovak Chamber Orchestra Žilina, symphony orchestras of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León (UANL) – Monterrey of Colombia, Shenzhen (China), Sendai Philharmonic (Japan), South Korean orchestras Bucheon and Wonju.
Vladimir Kiradjiev teaches opera conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, and gives conducting courses in Austria, Poland, Bulgaria and Mexico.
He is the winner of the Crystal Lyre Award for Best Conductor of 2015.