Vladimir Jurowski

Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Designate, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Principal Conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra
Principal Artist, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Artistic Director, State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia (Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra)
Artistic Director, “George Enescu” International Festival

Biography

One of today’s most sought-after conductors, acclaimed worldwide for his incisive musicianship and adventurous artistic commitment, Vladimir Jurowski was born in Moscow in 1972, and completed the first part of his musical studies at the Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. In 1990 he relocated with his family to Germany, continuing his studies at the Musikhochschule of Dresden and Berlin, studying conducting with Rolf Reuter and vocal coaching with Semion Skigin. In 1995 he made his international debut at the Wexford Festival conducting Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night, and the same year saw his debut at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with Nabucco.

This season Vladimir Jurowski takes up the position of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. He also celebrates ten years as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic, having been appointed in 2007 following four years as the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor. In addition he holds the titles of Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Artistic Director of the Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra, and Artistic Director of the George Enescu International Festival, Bucharest. He has previously held the positions of First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997-2000), Principal Guest Conductor of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (2000-2003), Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra (2005-2009) and Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001-2013).

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Vladimir Jurowski enjoys close relationships with the world’s most distinguished artistic institutions. He works annually with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and appears regularly with the London Philharmonic at festivals including the BBC Proms, the George Enescu Festival of Bucharest, Musikfest Berlin, and the Dresden, Schleswig Holstein and Rostropovich Festivals. He collaborates with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Chicago and Boston Symphonies, and has also conducted the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras.

Recent highlights include Fidelio, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and Penderecki’s St Luke’s Passion with the London Philharmonic, Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, his debut at the Salzburg Easter Festival at the helm of the Staatskapelle Dresden, appearances with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Lucerne Festival and a unique project with the London Sinfonietta in Moscow to celebrate the Anglo-Russian Year of Cultural Exchange. With the State Academic Symphony of Russia he has developed a highly individual and celebrated profile in Moscow with a strong focus on contemporary repertoire, and curated projects, including recently a series of performances exploring treatments of Shakespeare in Soviet music, theatre and cinema.

Highlights of the 2017/18 season and beyond include his debut with the Czech Philharmonic, and tours of major European cities with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. He opens his first season with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin with Mahler’s Second symphony, and programmes across the season include a focus on the Second Viennese School, and Beethoven’s symphonies in Mahler’s performing arrangements. With the London Philharmonic he spearheads a series focusing on Stravinsky and his influences and contemporaries, and conducts performances of Enescu’s Oedipe (in London and at the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest), Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and tours to Germany and Japan. Operatically, highlights include a return to the Opera National de Paris in the original 1869 version of Boris Godunov.

A committed operatic conductor, Jurowski made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York in 1999 with Rigoletto, and has since returned for Jenufa, The Queen of Spades, Hansel und Gretel and Die Frau ohne Schatten. He has conducted Parsifal and Wozzeck at the Welsh National Opera, War and Peace at the Opera National de Paris, Eugene Onegin at Teatro alla Scala Milan, Ruslan and Ludmila at the Bolshoi Theatre, Salome with the State Academic Symphony of Russia, and Iolanta and Der Teufel von Loudon at the Semperoper Dresden, as well as Die Zauberflöte, La Cenerentola, Otello, Macbeth, Falstaff, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Don Giovanni, The Rake’s Progress, The Cunning Little Vixen, Ariadne auf Naxos and Peter Eötvös’ Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne Opera. In 2015 he returned to the Komische Oper Berlin for a universally-acclaimed new production of Moses und Aron, and made his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich with Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, and in 2017 made an acclaimed Salzburg Festival debut with Wozzeck, and his first return to Glyndebourne as a guest conductor, in the world premiere production of Brett Dean’s Hamlet.

Jurowski’s discography with the London Philharmonic Orchestra includes the complete symphonies of Brahms, Mahler’s First and Second Symphonies, Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies 1, 4, 5, 6 and Manfred, and works by Beethoven, Turnage, Holst, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich, Honegger, Haydn, Zemlinsky and Rachmaninov. He has also recorded Schnittke’s Third Symphony with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and a series of Russian works with the Russian National Orchestra for PentaTone Records, works by Mendelssohn and Mahler with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and wide-ranging repertoire from Meyerbeer to Kancheli. The 2017/18 season sees releases of discs of Strauss and Mahler with the Rundfunk-Sinfoniorchester Berlin, and Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky with the State Academic Symphony of Russia. His tenure as Music Director at Glyndebourne has been documented in numerous CD and DVD releases including award-winning productions of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Ariadne auf Naxos, Falstaff, La Cenerentola, Rachmaninov’s The Miserly Knight and Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery. Other DVD releases include Hansel und Gretel from the Metropolitan Opera New York, his first concert as London Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal conductor featuring works by Wagner, Berg and Mahler, and DVDs with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Beethoven symphonies 4 and 7) and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Strauss and Ravel), all released by Medici Arts.

Season 2017/18

Reviews

“This Ariadne was Vladimir Jurowski’s final production as Music Director of Glyndebourne, and he does a brilliant job with his chamber orchestra of musicians. […] his tempi are just right and, more importantly, he controls the orchestral sound very successfully. He breeds delicacy and transparency in so much of the score, while releasing wave upon wave of richness in the final ten minutes. His contribution is a triumph.”

Simon Thompson

MusicWeb International

“Vladimir Jurowski’s [Vaughan Williams] Eighth at once restores one’s faith in the art of conducting. He too keeps sonority and expression taut, yet in a way that gives the orchestra time to play. They respond superbly, alighting on the music’s idiom with unerring touch and precision.”

BBC Music Magazine

More Reviews

“Vladimir Jurowski has the knack of sidestepping predictability to bring together works that illuminate and invigorate one another, and this concert was no exception. ”

The Times, September 2016

“This Ariadne was Vladimir Jurowski’s final production as Music Director of Glyndebourne, and he does a brilliant job with his chamber orchestra of musicians. […] his tempi are just right and, more importantly, he controls the orchestral sound very successfully. He breeds delicacy and transparency in so much of the score, while releasing wave upon wave of richness in the final ten minutes. His contribution is a triumph.”

Simon Thompson, MusicWeb International, January 2015

“Vladimir Jurowski’s [Vaughan Williams] Eighth at once restores one’s faith in the art of conducting. He too keeps sonority and expression taut, yet in a way that gives the orchestra time to play. They respond superbly, alighting on the music’s idiom with unerring touch and precision.”

BBC Music Magazine, April 2015

“Jurowski and the LPO’s performance was just right; deliberate, massively decisive, yet bracingly light. Throughout they held all the different aspects of the piece – the nostalgia, the swirling, surreal waltzes, the self-mocking sarcasm – in an ideal balance.”

Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph, October 2014

“The guiding spirit clearly is Vladimir Jurowski in his final new production as the festival’s Music Director. The LPO does his bidding from first note to last, offering playing of the utmost sensitivity and accomplishment. Jurowski is, of course, the theatre man par excellence, always connected to every details of the events onstage. He thoroughly understands not just the bustle of the Prologue but also the outpourings of heavenly Straussian lyricism there and later in the opera proper.”

International Record Review, September 2014

“The guest performance in the “Alte Oper Frankfurt”, conducted by the judicious Vladimir Jurowski created a completely new sound world. The music had incredible precision and musical gestures emerged in a wonderfully vivid way.”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Kultur, 26th March 2014

“Throughout the performance Jurowski’s commanding appreciation and manipulation of the whole and of the details and minutiae was impressively assured; the merest sign from the baton, clear and precise, was all that the performers required, and confident, communal understanding was unfailingly evident. ”

Claire Seymour, Opera Today, October 2013

“The greatest heroes of the occasion, though, are the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Vladimir Jurowski, whose superb performance makes this Glyndebourne recording [of Tristan und Isolde] an indispensable addition to a Wagnerian’s collection, however large it may be. ”

Michael Tanner, BBC Music Magazine, September 2013

“The great strength here is musical fastidiousness. Leading his first Tristan, Vladimir Jurowski has imbued the performance with a special elegance and an unerring sense of proportion. Expressively speaking, absolutely nothing is exaggerated; even in Act 3 Jurowski never lets cumulative dramatic power interfere with his and his colleagues’ command of the score’s essential requirements. Much can be said for a Tristan in which a consistent, unaffected purity of musical approach comes squarely to the force.”

Roger Pines, International Record Review of Glyndebourne “Tristan und Isolde”, September 2013

“The most memorable Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of 2012 came in November, when the Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski, in his BSO debut, led a searing account of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. His music-making tends to crackle with fresh ideas and intellectual engagement. […] Jurowski’s podium technique prizes concision of gesture and he manages a striking degree of orchestral control through a minimum of motion. […] the musical insights and micro-sculpting of phrases kept the ear perpetually engaged. ”

Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe, June 2013

“Vladimir Jurowski conducts magnificently: aside from Mackerras himself, I’ve never heard [The Cunning Little Vixen] conducted with such colour, wit, detail and dramatic urgency; but there is also such tenderness and flexibility […] there’s not a single musical judgement that left me unconvinced.”

Nigel Simeone, International Record Review, May 2013