The art of Valery Gergiev is in great demand throughout the world. The maestro is a vivid representative of the St Petersburg conducting school and a former pupil of the legendary Professor Ilya Musin. While still a student at the Leningrad Conservatoire, Gergiev won the Herbert von Karajan Competition in Berlin and the All-Union Conducting Competition in Moscow, following which he was invited to join the Kirov Theatre (now the Mariinsky) as an assistant to the principal conductor. His debut as a conductor at the theatre came on 12 January 1978 with Sergei Prokofiev's opera War and Peace. In 1988 Valery Gergiev was appointed Music Director of the Mariinsky Theatre, and in 1996 he became its Artistic and General Director (leading the orchestra and opera and ballet companies