Trivia

Conducted his first complete "Nutcracker" at the age of twenty(!) at the Bolshoi Theatre; he later conducted it for television.

Conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 1981.

Conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1982.

Conductor of the Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre from 1951 to 1970.

Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (1992-).

His father Nikolai Anosov was a conductor and teacher, and his mother Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya was a soprano. Rozhdestvensky took his mother's name because he didn't want his father's name to be seen as helping his own conducting career.

He helped to popularize music by composers who were frowned on by the Communist authorities in the USSR, including Poulenc and Hindemith. In 1974, he conducted the USSR premiere of the previously banned opera "The Nose" by Shostakovich.