Michail Jurowski
Born in Moscow in 1945, Michail Jurowski is the son of the composer Wladimir Jurowski and grandson of the conductor David Block. His sons Vladimir and Dmitri are also internationally renowned conductors. Michail Jurowski grew up in a circle of internationally acclaimed artists of the former Soviet Union such as Ojstrach, Rostropovitch, Kogan, Gilels, and Khachaturian. Dmitri Shostakovich was a close family friend and he and Michail not only spoke often but would also play four-hand piano pieces together. Such experiences had a huge influence on the young musician and it is therefore no coincidence that today Michail Jurowski is one of the leading interpreters of Shostakovich’s music. In 2012 Michail Jurowski was awarded the third International Shostakovich Prize by the Shostakovich Gohrisch Foundation.
Michail Jurowski was educated at the Moscow Conservatoire, where he studied conducting under Leo Ginsburg and music science under Alexei Kandinsky. During his studies he assisted Gennady Rozhdestvensky at the National Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra of Moscow. While still a resident in Russia, he conducted the Music Theatre of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko in Moscow and during his last years in the Soviet Union frequently conducted performances at the Bolshoi Theatre.
From 1978 Michail Jurowski was regular guest conductor at the Komische Oper Berlin and in 1989 he left the USSR with his family after accepting a permanent post with the Dresden Semperoper. Other titled positions have included: General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Northwest German Philharmonic Orchestra; Chief Conductor of Leipzig Opera; Chief Conductor of WDR Rundfunkorchester in Cologne; Principal Conductor of Deutsche Oper Berlin; Principal Guest Conductor of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra; and Principal Guest Conductor of the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, Sinfonia Iuventus and Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower Austria.
As a guest conductor Michail Jurowski has led the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, Oslo Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, St Petersburg Philharmonic, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Det Kongelige Kapel Copenhagen, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porta Casa da Música, and São Paulo Symphony, among others.
Besides televised concerts and radio recordings in Stuttgart, Cologne, Dresden, Oslo, Norrköping, Hannover and Berlin, Maestro Jurowski has recorded with orchestras including the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. His discography includes Shostakovich’s opera “The Gamblers”, Shostakovich’s entire vocal symphonic pieces, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Christmas Eve”, as well as orchestral pieces by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Reznicek, Meyerbeer, Lehár, Kálmán, Nicolai, Rangström, Pettersen-Berger, Grieg, Svensen, Kantcheli and many others.
In 1992 and 1996 Jurowski won the German Record Critics’ Prize and in 2001 he received a Grammy nomination for 3 CD productions of Orchestral Music by Rimsky-Korsakov with the RSB. He was most recently awarded the German Record Critics’ Prize again in 2017, for his disc of music by Shostakovich, Pӓrt and Weinberg, recorded live with the Staatskapelle Dresden at the International Shostakovich Festival in Gohrisch.