Emerging and Fading

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 will perform 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.

The ensemble unitedberlin was founded in 1989 with the symbolic purpose of reconnecting classical musicians in a city long divided by the Cold War. Since its inception the ensemble has been transcending barriers both musically and geographically. Performances at festivals in Albania, Brazil, Hungary, Israel, Poland, Russia, China, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland accompany the ensembles activities in Berlin. Recent performances international engagements include concerts at the ‘Milano Musica’ and „Slowind’ in Ljubljana.

Unitedberlin’s focus lies in presenting a wide range of contemporary music in the context of modernist repertoire ranging from Schönberg and Webern to Nono and Cage. Several concert programs were created in close collaboration with composers of our time such as Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Mark Anthony Turnage, Christian Wolff, Toshio Hosokawa and Vinko Globokar, yielding a variety of formats such as lecture concerts, instrumental workshops or documentary projects.

A characteristic feature of unitedberlin is its openness to interdisciplinary approaches. A series of five concerts took to exploring sonic intersections with the visual arts. The ongoing «Transfigurations» series looks at unusual connections between video art and musical composition. Music theatre projects have included performances of Schönberg’s «Die Glückliche Hand», Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s satire «Simplicius Simplicissimus», Christian Josts «Death Knocks» based on a film by Woody Allen, or Vinko Globokar’s musical theater piece «The Emigrants».

Current projects include a four part series in Berlin’s eminent Konzerthaus commemorating the 20 anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with works by composers from East and West Germany as well as a program with new works written for an ensemble of Asian and Western instruments and a portrait concert of works by Vinko Globokar on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

Unitedberlin has released several CD on the Wergo, Col legno and Ars musici labels that have received international acclaim. Paul Griffiths wrote of the ensemble’s disc with works by Luigi Nono (WERGO 6631-2): “There have been a lot of Nono releases since the composer’s death in 1990. This is one of the best.” (New York Times, Dec. 29, 1998)

Anisha Bondy, born in 1981 in London, lives with her husband and three children in Berlin. She studied musical theatre direction at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where she graduated in 2005 with a production of “Die Kluge” by Carl Orff. Her path led her via the opera houses in Basel and Cologne to the Komische Oper Berlin. Since 2007 she has assisted many directors including Katharina Thalbach, Michael Thalheimer, Claus Guth, Andreas Homoki, Hans Neuenfels, Peter Konwitschny, Sebastian Baumgarten, Benedict Andrews and Barrie Kosky.
From 2009 – 2011 she held a scholarship in the directing category at the Deutsche Bank Foundation’s Akademie Musiktheater Heute. Since then, as an alumna, she has been conducting workshops at the Komische Oper Berlin for young people from immigrant backgrounds to introduce them to the world of opera.
In 2010 she directed the world premiere of “The Snow Queen” by Pierangelo Valtinoni at the Komische Oper Berlin. In the summers of 2011 – 2014 she was assistant director on Sebastian Baumgarten’s production of “Tannhäuser” at the Bayreuth Festival.
Since 2015, she has intensified her work in the outreach field as scenic director of “Selam Opera!”, the intercultural project of the Komische Oper Berlin. Together with her team, she developed formats such as the ‘Pop-Up Opera’ or the opera bus ‘Operndolmus’. In 2016, the team retraced the migrant worker route from Berlin to Istanbul with a 45-minute musical theatre review that was performed at various places along the journey. “Selam Opera!” was awarded the BKM Prize for Cultural Education.
Anisha Bondy worked together with conductor Vladimir Jurowski on the projects “Claude Vivier – 70/35 – a sacred act” (2018) and “Les espaces acoustiques” (2019) by Gérard Grisey at the Konzerthaus Berlin.