George-Enescu-Festival II

Vladimir Jurowski is one of the most sought-after conductors of our time, enjoying international acclaim for his outstanding musical ability and a consistently adventurous artistic approach. He has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) since September 2017. He was born in Moscow, where he began his musical education at the conservatoire. In 1990, he and his family moved to Germany, where he completed his studies at the colleges of music in Dresden and Berlin. His international debut was at the Wexford festival as well as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1995.

Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003, becoming its Principal Conductor in 2007. In addition, he is Artistic Director of the Russian Academic State Orchestra “Yevgeny Svetlanov”, Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Artistic Advisor to the “ensemble unitedberlin”. In 2015 he was also appointed Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. It was announced in March 2018 that he is to become Generalmusikdirektor of the Bavarian State Opera as from the 2021/2022 season. In the past he has held positions including First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997-2000) and Musical Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001-2013). In March 2016 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Music in London.

Vladimir Jurowski conducts top orchestras in Europe and North America, such as the Dresdner Staatskapelle, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, and the New York Philharmonic, as well as the Berlin and Vienna philharmonic orchestras. He also appears regularly at international festivals such as the BBC Proms, and since 1995 he has worked at major international opera houses, incl. at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Welsh National Opera, the Scala in Milan, the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Dresden Semper Opera.

He returned to Glyndebourne Opera in 2017 for the world premiere of Brett Dean’s “Hamlet” and shortly afterwards he made his debut at Salzburg Festival with Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck”. In 2018 he conducted new productions of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” at the Opéra National de Paris and Franz Schreker’s “Die Gezeichneten” at Zurich Opera House.

His extensive, frequently prizewinning discography now includes three recordings with the RSB for PENTATONE, interpreting works by Schnittke, Mahler, Strauss, Hindemith and Britten.

One of the world´s leading violinists, Julia Fischer is a versatile musician also known for her extraordinary abilities as a concert pianist, a chamber musician and a violin teacher. Born in Munich to German-Slovakian parents Julia received her first violin lessons at the age of 3 and her first piano lessons shortly after from her mother Viera Fischer. At the age of 9 she started studying with the renowned violin professor Ana Chumachenco, later becoming her successor. The first prize at the international Yehudi Menuhin Competition in 1995 was one of the milestones in her early career and she has since performed with top orchestras worldwide frequently working with renowned conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yuri Temirkanov and Franz Welser-Möst.

Julia Fischer started the 2018/19 season touring Europe with her long-time chamber music partners Nils Mönkemeyer and Daniel Müller-Schott. She then embarked on a tour of Asia with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski performing in Seoul, Taipei, Beijing and Shanghai as well as with the Dresden Philharmonic and Michael Sanderling with concerts in Japan and Korea. She was joined by violinist Augustin Hadelich for an extensive tour of Germany with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, an orchestra she frequently collaborates with.

Highlights of the past seasons include concerts with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester under Kirill Petrenko at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and New York’s Carnegie Hall and a residency with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Philippe Jordan.

In 2011 Julia Fischer founded her own Quartet with Alexander Sitkovetsky, Nils Mönkemeyer and Benjamin Nyffenegger and continues to tour extensively in this formation. Her concert at the Alte Oper Frankfurt in 2010 marked her debut as a pianist: She performed the Grieg Piano Concerto in the second half of the concert, having played Saint-Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in the first half. The performance is available on a Decca-released DVD. Teaching is another integral part of her musical life as she continues to nurture and guide young talent. In February 2019, she performed together with her students Eva Zavaro and Louis Vandory with the Kammerakademie Potsdam at the Berlin Philharmonie. She regularly gives masterclasses at Musikferien at Lake Starnberg (Starnberger See).

Over the course of her artistic career Julia Fischer has released numerous critically acclaimed and awarded CD and DVD recordings, first under the Pentatone label and later under Decca. Breaking new ground in the classical music market, she has recently launched her own music platform, the JF CLUB, which offers exclusive audio and video footage, previews of her new recordings as well as personal insight into music and her her work. The six solo sonatas by Eugène Ysaye, César Franck’s Sonata in A major and Karol Szymanowski’s Sonata in D minor are all available exclusively on JF CLUB.

Julia Fischer holds numerous awards including the Federal Cross of Merit, Gramophone Award and the German Culture Prize. She plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1742) as well as an instrument made by Phillipp Augustin (2018).

The “George Enescu” Philharmonic Choir was established in 1950. Up to that point, great vocal-symphonic works had been only sporadically performed on Romanian stages, mostly by private and semi-professional choirs which didn’t always correspond to the level of the Philharmonic Orchestra.

The New State Choir brought about a true change of the general public perception concerning the classical music. In its tireless and rich activity – oratorios, masses, motets, A Cappella concerts  –  the vocal  ensemble performed all masterpieces from Monteverdi to Bach, Haydn to Brahms, to the most avant-gardist works of contemporary music. The careful selection of the choir members, as well as the collaboration with notorious conductors contribute both to maintaining the professional level next to the standards of the Philharmonic Orchestra.

Since 1990, the “George Enescu” Philharmonic Choir took part in extraordinary events of the Romanian musical life. In 1995 it had the chance to work with the great Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and in 1998 it performed a concert version of the opera “Oedipe” by George Enescu together with the Orchestre National de France and Lawrence Foster, during the “George Enescu” International Festival.

The conductor and pianist Iosif Ion Prunner, member of a well-known family of musicians and intellectuals in Romania, took over the leadership of the “George Enescu” Philharmonic Choir in 1997. During his tenure which already spans over two decades, the conductor of the Choir has encouraged the expansion of the choir repertory and supported as well the solo appearances of the choir members. In this case, he often plays the role of the accompanist on the piano in chamber music evenings.

As part of the European musical circuit, the “George Enescu” Philharmonic Choir goes regularly on international tours, having already performed in Spain, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece. Among the most important recent achievements are worth mentioning the collaborations with first calibre orchestras and conductors at the “George Enescu” Festival: Daniel Barenboim and Staatskapelle Berlin (2013, in Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces), Vladimir Jurowski and The London Philharmonic Orchestra (2017, in Enescu’s opera “Oedipe”, which was repeated shortly after in the season opening of the same British orchestra).

Congratulated by the famous pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, who expressed his “admiration and affection” for the conductor and the ensemble he led during the “George Enescu” Festival, awarded the Cultural Order Merit in rank of Knight (2003), conductor Iosif Ion Prunner was born in Bucharest, part of a family fond of music and with deep cultural roots.

“The heritage of a family of musicians, but also that of a well-established family whose members founded churches and monasteries, one of intellectuals with fine preoccupations in philosophy, law, theater or writing: the Pîrîianu family, on my mother’s side”, said Iosif Prunner in an interview for the magazine Observator cultural.

He made his debut when he was 6 years old and he played on the scene of the Romanian Athenaeum at 14. He studied at “Dinu Lipatti” Music College and at the Music University in Bucharest. He took piano and conducting classes with Zoe Popescu, Ana Pitiş, Maria Fotino, Constantin Bugeanu and Sergiu Comissiona.

After graduation he became part of the orchestra at the “George Enescu” Philharmonic. In 1991 he founded the Foundation and Chamber Music Orchestra “Constantin Silvestri” and in 1996 he was the director of the eponymous International Conducting Competition. In 1997, maestro Cristian Mandeal assigned him with conducting the Philharmonic Choir, while also being asked to conduct the concerts of the Symphonic and Chamber Music Orchestra of the Philharmonic. Also, in 1997 he conducted the semi-professional doctors’ orchestra in Bucharest, following a long tradition of the “George Enescu” Philharmonic. In December 2007 he was invited, together with the Capitole Toulouse Orchestra and the Orfeu – San Sebastian Choir, to present a production of the Requiem by Verdi in San Sebastian, Toulouse and Paris – Salle Pleyel.

In Romania he collaborated with the most important orchestras in the country, the National Radio Orchestra and the Chamber Radio Orchestra and he was also invited to give concerts at the National Romanian Opera.

He gave concerts in important music centres in Europe and Asia (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Greece, Hungary, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Korea etc.) and he took part in important festivals in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Italy etc. He collaborated with prestigious music personalities such as Cristian Mandeal, Sergiu Comissiona, Lawrence Craig, Valentin Gheorghiu, Ludovic Spiess, Eugenia Moldoveanu, Michel Plasson, Krzysztof Penderecki, Ion Marin, Adrian Eröd, Neil Stuart, Tatiana Serjan, Dolora Zajick, Carlo Colombara and with distinguished orchestras such as Orchestre national de France, Münchner Philharmoniker, “Arturo Toscanini” Philharmonic, the Orchestra of Warsaw’s Festival, Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Catalonia National Orchestra, Ostrava’s Janacek Philharmonic, Capitole Toulouse Orchestra.