A look at the dark side of the moon

Vladimir Jurowski has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2017. He has meanwhile extended his contract until 2027. In parallel, he has been General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich since 2021.

After receiving training at the Moscow Conservatory The conductor, pianist and musicologist Vladimir Jurowski emigrated to Germany in 1990. Here he continued his studies at the music conservatories in Dresden and Berlin.  In 1995 he made his international debut at the British Wexford Festival with Rimski-Korsakov’s Mainacht and in the same year at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with Nabucco. Subsequently he was, among other things, First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997- 2001) and Music Director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001-2013). In 2003 Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and has been its Principal Conductor since 2007 until 2021. He was also Artistic Director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra Yevgeny Svetlanov of the Russian Federation until 2021, Artistic Director of the International George Enescu Festival in Bucharest and Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Great Britain. He works regularly with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the ensemble unitedberlin.

Vladimir Jurowski has conducted the major orchestras of Europe and North America, including the Berlin, Vienna and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

He is a recurring guest conductor in in London, Berlin, Dresden, Luzern, Schleswig-Holstein und Grafenegg as well as at the Rostopowitsch-Festival. Although Vladimir Jurowski is invited as a guest conductor by top orchestras from all over the world, in future he would like to concentrate his activities on that geographical area which is acceptable to him from an ecological point of view.

In 2022/2023 he performed with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin in concerts in various cities in Germany, Italy and Antwerp in the Netherlands. The joint CD recordings of Vladimir Jurowski and the RSB began in 2015 with Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3, followed by works by Britten, Hindemith, Strauss, Mahler and soon again Schnittke.

Vladimir Jurowski has been the recipient of numerous awards for his achievements, including various international record prizes. In 2016, he was bestowed an honorary doctorate from Prince Charles at the Royal College of Music in London. In 2018, the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards named him Conductor of the Year. In summer 2020, Jurowski was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Romanian President in recognition of his work as Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival.

Alice Lackner is internationally active as an opera, concert and lied singer. She has worked closely with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski and the lautten compagney under Wolfgang Katschner. She has also sung with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Essen Philharmonic, the Russian State Orchestra Kaliningrad, the Brandenburg State Orchestra, Ensemble 1700 (under Dorothee Oberlinger), L’Orfeo, La Banda, Concerto Theresia, Stiftsbarock Stuttgart and le buisson prospérant.
Previous engagements have taken her to the Berlin Philharmonie and the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Aalto Theatre in Essen, the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth, the Potsdam Sanssouci Music Festival, the Berlin Music Festival, the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, the Innsbruck Early Music Festival and the Mosel Music Festival. Various recordings for Deutschlandfunk, ARTE Concert as well as her debut CD “Ernsthaft?!” (GENUIN 2021) are proof of her artistic creativity.
Alice Lackner studied singing with Prof. Kunz-Eisenlohr at the HfMT Cologne/Aachen and is currently receiving further training from Sami Kustaloglu. She is a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation and a prizewinner of “cantatebach!”, the chamber opera Schloss Rheinsberg, and of the “Podium junger Gesangssolisten”. She is also a sociologist at ZOiS Berlin.