che (Please credit as "Petr Novák, Wikipedia" in case you use this outside Wikimedia projects.) · CC BY-SA 3.0

A pianist and conductor whose career carried him from a Soviet childhood to citizenship in Iceland, defecting from the USSR in 1963 to pursue music free of state control. He has led major orchestras and built one of the largest recorded catalogues of any classical musician of his generation, spanning the Romantic repertoire in particular, work recognized with seven Grammy Awards and three grades of Iceland's Order of the Falcon.