Chamber concert with Vladimir Jurowski & Christian Tetzlaff

Vladimir Jurowski has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the RundfunkSinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) since 2017. In 2023/2024, his concerts, tours and recordings were the highlights of the ‘RSB100’ anniversary season. His current contract in Berlin runs until 2027,
while he has also been General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich since 2021.

Vladimir Jurowski, one of the most sought-after conductors of our time, who is celebrated worldwide for his innovative musical interpretations and equally for his courageous artistic commitment, was born in Moscow in 1972 and completed the first part of his music studies at the Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. He moved to Germany with his family in 1990 and continued his studies at the music academies in Dresden and Berlin. In 1995, he made his debut at the Wexford Festival in Ireland with Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Mainacht’ and in 1996 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with ‘Nabucco’. He was then First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997-2001).

Vladimir Jurowski worked as Chief Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) for fifteen years until 2021 and has since been appointed Conductor Emeritus. In the UK, he was Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera from 2001 to 2013, leading a wide range of highly acclaimed productions. His close connection to British musical life was recognised by King Charles III in spring 2024 when he appointed Vladimir Jurowski an Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). In April 2024, Vladimir Jurowski returned to London as a guest conductor to complete the concert performance cycle of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ with ‘Götterdämmerung’ with the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall.

He was Artistic Director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra ‘Yevgeny Svetlanov’ of the Russian Federation until 2021 and Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Great Britain, as well as Artistic Director of the International George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. He has also worked with the unitedberlin ensemble for many years. Vladimir Jurowski has suspended performances in Russia since February 2022. Ukrainian works are and will remain part of his repertoire, as will works by Russian composers.

Vladimir Jurowski has conducted concerts by the most important orchestras in Europe and North America, including the Berlin, Vienna and New York Philharmonics, 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 Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig. He is a regular guest at the music festivals in London, Berlin, Dresden, Lucerne, SchleswigHolstein and Grafenegg. Although Vladimir Jurowski is invited as a guest conductor by top orchestras from all over the world, he now concentrates his activities on those geographical areas that he can easily reach with reasonable effort from an ecological point of view.

The joint CD recordings by Vladimir Jurowski and the RSB began in 2015 with Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3, followed by works by Britten, Hindemith, Strauss, Mahler and again Schnittke. Vladimir Jurowski has been honoured many times for his achievements, including numerous international record awards. In 2016, he received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Philharmonic Society from the hands of the current King Charles III. In 2020, Vladimir Jurowski’s work as Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival was honoured by the Romanian President with the Order of Cultural Merit.

Christian Tetzlaff is one of the most sought-after violinists and most exciting musicians on the classical music scene. Concerts with him often become an existential experience for the interpreter and audience alike; old familiar works suddenly appear in a completely new light. In addition, he frequently turns his attention to forgotten masterpieces such as Joseph Joachim’s Violin Concerto or the Violin Concerto No. 22 by Giovanni Battista Viotti, a contemporary of Mozart and Beethoven. To broaden his repertoire, he also commits himself to substantial new works, such as Jörg Widmann’s Violin Concerto, which he premiered in 2013. With devotion he cultivates an unusually extensive repertoire and performs approximately 100 concerts every year. From 2023 onwards, he is Artistic director of the Spannungen Festival in Heimbach.

In the 2024/25 season, Christian Tetzlaff appears with orchestras, including Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Afkham), St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (Storgårds), Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (Paavo Järvi), Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Afkham), hr-Sinfonieorchester (Gardner), Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (Lintu), Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Emelyanychev), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Collon) sowie dem Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Gatti). As a sought-after touring soloist, he performs with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Belgium and the Netherlands, with the Kammerakademie Potsdam in six German cities, and joins the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra on stage in Japan, Germany, and England.

Christian Tetzlaff is regularly invited as Artist in Residence to present his musical views over a longer period of time, including with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and Dresdner Philharmoniker. In the 2021/22 season, he was given this honour at London’s Wigmore Hall and in 2022/23 he was “Portrait Artist” of the London Symphony Orchestra. In the 2024/25 season, Tetzlaff is Focus Artist at the Rheingau Music Festival as well as Artist in Residence at the Kammerakademie Potsdam.

Over the course of his career, Christian Tetzlaff has made guest appearances with all the great orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouworkest in Amsterdam and all the London orchestras. He has worked with legendary Maestri such as Sergiu Celibidache, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur and Christoph von Dohnányi. Close artistic ties have also been forged with Karina Canellakis, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle, Francois Xavier Roth, Robin Ticciati, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Barbara Hannigan, Ed Gardner, Ingo Metzmacher, and Kent Nagano.

In 1994, Christian Tetzlaff together with his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, founded his own string quartet, and to this day chamber music is as close to his heart as his work as a soloist. Each year he undertakes at least one tour with the Tetzlaff Quartett, this season with concerts in the Berliner Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie, London’s Wigmore Hall, Kölner Philharmonie, Philharmonie Luxembourg, and in the USA with concerts in New York, San Francisco, Yale Univerity and more. The Tetzlaff Quartett was awarded the Diapason d’or in 2015, and in 2016 the trio, with his sister Tanja Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt, was nominated for a GRAMMY award. The trio’s last recording of works by Schubert was only released after Lars Vogt’s untimely passing, and was awarded the OPUS Klassik for best chamber music recording in 2023. This season, Christian Tetzlaff will also join Kiveli Dörken in a duo in Japan, and as a piano trio with his sister Tanja Tetzlaff in the Wigmore Hall, among other places.

Christian Tetzlaff has also received numerous prizes for his recordings, including the ‘Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik’ and the ‘Diapason d’or’ in 2018 as well as the Midem Classical Award in 2017. Of particular significance to him are Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, which he recorded for the third time and released in September 2017. The Strad magazine praised this recording as “an attentive and lively answer to the beauty of Bach’s solos”. The Ondine label released the recording of the Beethoven and Sibelius violin concertos in autumn 2019, followed by Brahms and Berg in August 2022 – both with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Robin Ticciati.

Born in Hamburg in 1966 and now living in Berlin with his family, there are three things that make this musician unique, aside from his astounding skill on the violin. He interprets the musical manuscript in a literal fashion, he perceives music as a language, and reads the great works as narratives that reflect existential insights. As obvious as it may sound, he brings an unusual approach in his daily concert routine.

Christian Tetzlaff tries to fulfill the musical text as deeply as possible – without indulging in the usual technical short-cuts on the violin – often allowing a renewed clarity and richness to arise in well-known works. As a violinist Tetzlaff tries to disappear behind the work – and paradoxically this makes his interpretations very personal.
Secondly, Christian Tetzlaff “speaks” through his violin. Like human speech, his playing comprises a wide range of expressive means and is not aimed solely at achieving harmoniousness or virtuosic brilliance.
Above all, however, he interprets the masterpieces of musical history as stories about first-hand experiences. The great composers have focused on intense feelings, great happiness and deep crises in their music; Christian Tetzlaff, as a musician, also explores the limits of feelings and musical expression. Many pieces deal with nothing less than life and death. Christian Tetzlaff’s aim is to convey this to his audience.

Significantly, Tetzlaff played in youth orchestras for many years. In Uwe-Martin Haiberg at the Lübeck Music Academy, he had a teacher for whom musical interpretation was the key to mastering violin technique, rather than the other way around.
Christian Tetzlaff plays a violin by the German violin maker Peter Greiner and teaches regularly at the Kronberg Academy.

He lives in Berlin with his wife, the photographer Giorgia Bertazzi, and three children.

Nadine Contini, principal second violin, has been a member of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since March 2005.

She was born in 1979 in Saarbrücken and received her first violin lessons at the age of 5 years with Ms Christa Schmitt-Rink. Later she studied under Ulrieke Dierick. In 1996 she was admitted to the Pflüger-Stiftung Freiburg and the Spohr-Akademie for the promotion of highly gifted young violinists, where she was trained by Wolfgang Marschner and Ariane Mathäus. In 2000, she began her studies at the Musikhochschule “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin with Antje Weithaas, where she graduated with the concert exam of 2008. She attended master classes with Antje Weithaas, Wolfgang Marschner, Christian Tetzlaff, Guy Braunstein, and Boris Pergamenchikov.

Nadine Contini has won awards in numerous competitions: In 1998, she was awarded with the first “Young Musicians” federal prize. In addition, she received a second prize at the International Max Reger Competition and a special prize for the best interpretation of a solo work by Max Reger. In 2004, she won the competition of Ibolyka-Gyarfas-Stiftung. She was awarded with prizes for cultural promotion by the Casino Gesellschaft Saarbrücken and the Saarländischen Rundfunk. In addition, she was the prize winner and scholarship holder of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

As a soloist, she has performed with the Landesjugendorchester of Saarland, the Cairo Chamber Orchestra, the Cairo Opera Orchestra, the Deutsche Spohr Philharmonie, the Symphonieorchester des Saarländischen Rundfunks as part of the concerts of young artists, the Max Bruch Philharmonie and the Brandenburger Symphoniker.

Nadine Contini plays a violin made by master violinmaker Stefan-Peter Greiner from Bonn and is involved as a mentor in the orchestra academy of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.

Alejandro Regueira Caumel, born in 1991 in Málaga/Spain, began playing the violin and piano at the age of six. In Madrid, he studied with Anna Baget and moved to Dionisio Rodríguez as a violist in 2008. In 2009 he came to Germany and studied at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” with Pauline Sachse and Tabea Zimmermann. Master classes with Wilfried Strehle, Andreas Willwohl, Roberto Díaz, Felix Schwartz and Jean Sulem complemented his education.

Chamber music has been a particular focus of his career to date. He participated in the chamber music festival of the “Kronberg Academy” and in the “Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland”, performed repeatedly with the Frielinghaus Ensemble and can be heard regularly at chamber music festivals such as the “Festival Ribeira Sacra” or in the Nikolaisaal Potsdam. He also won first prizes at various competitions, including the “Concurso Ibérico de Música de Cámara con Arpa” (in duo with harpist Maud Edenwald), the XII. International Competition for Viola and Cello “Villa de Llanes”, at the “Concurso María Cristina” for young soloists and at the competition of “Jeunesses Musicales” in Spain.

Alejandro Regueira Caumel gained orchestral experience as a member of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Spanish National Youth Orchestra, as well as through substitute work with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and as principal violist with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana and the Orquesta Nacional de España.

From 2010 to 2012 he was an academist with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and has been its principal violist since 2015.

Yugo Inoue was born in Tokyo in 1995. He began playing the violin at the age of five and switched to the viola at 16. He studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts with Toshihiko Ichitsubo and since 2020 with Veit Hertenstein at the Detmold University of Music.

He gained orchestral experience as an academist with the WDR Symphony Orchestra from 2021 to 2023 and as a substitute in the hr Symphony Orchestra. He received further impetus from master classes with Hariolf Schlichtig, Tabea Zimmermann and Nobuko Imai. Since 2023 he has been playing in the viola section of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.

Born into a family of musicians, Konstanze von Gutzeit began playing the cello at the age of three. She completed her studies from the age of thirteen with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna, and later with Jens Peter Maintz in Berlin and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt in Weimar.

Since 2012 Konstanze von Gutzeit has held the position of principal cellist of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. She is also internationally active as a soloist and chamber musician. She has performed with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Bochumer Sinfoniker, the Vienna, Munich and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and many others. She has worked with conductors such as Kurt Masur, Vladimir Jurowski, Michael Sanderling, Marek Janowski, Alexander Shelley and Yuri Bashmet. She has appeared at festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Verbier Festival and the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in numerous recitals and chamber music concerts.

From the beginning of her musical career, Konstanze von Gutzeit drew attention to herself through numerous international competition successes. She is a prizewinner of the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann 2010 and the International Prague Spring Competition 2012. In 2013 she was awarded 1st prize at the “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” University Competition in Berlin as well as the interdisciplinary “Mendelssohn Prize”. She was also the winner of the Domenico Gabrielli Competition in Berlin, the “Gradus ad Parnassum” Competition in Austria, the “International Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award” in Switzerland and the “International Suggia Prize” in Portugal. At the German Music Competition 2010 she was awarded a scholarship by the German Music Council and included in the national selection “Concerts of Young Artists”.

Konstanze von Gutzeit plays a cello by Gioffredo Cappa from 1677 as well as a new instrument by the Berlin instrument maker Ragnar Hayn from 2017.