Guilderland's Lidiya Yankovskaya to direct Albany Symphony

The Daily Gazette

Albany, NY

Lidiya Yankovskaya has come a long way from when at 17 she conducted her Guilderland High School orchestra to conduct the Albany Symphony Orchestra on Saturday at Proctors.

“It's wonderful and especially meaningful to me because of Jeff [Herchenroder, a long-time ASO bass player who died in 2020] who was the first to give me the opportunity to conduct,” Yankovskaya said. “And I've watched the orchestra from a long time ago and their interesting and innovative programming with new music and with David Alan Miller a leader mixing everything but championing living composers, which I'm passionate about.”

It all started when nine-year old Yankovskaya and her mother emigrated from Russia. Even then, she said, she was a “precocious pianist” and quickly became the accompanist for the school's choruses. When she won the school's piano competition at 17 at which she was to play one of Mozart's piano concertos, Herchenroder, who was the school's orchestra conductor, suggested she lead from the piano, much as Mozart would have done. Later, when the orchestra was to play the third movement of Dvorak's Symphony No. 7, he offered her the baton and even to do the concert.

“I loved the piece and I'd had a small class in conducting — there were five kids to learn the basics. But he encouraged me to lead the rehearsals and I was so lucky for his support. It put me on the podium and it felt right,” she said.

Yankovskaya never questioned that feeling. “I knew I wanted to be a conductor, be good at it and to work with the best,” she said.

“I loved bringing people together and making things happen and drawing out the best in them,” Yankovskaya said. “That appealed to me: be a maker, a doer. To thrill and move an audience. It's so powerful. And it's different because it's collaborative. As a pianist, it's so lonely. But as a conductor it's more fun with other people and more challenging.”