Vladimir Jurowski & Nils Mönkemeyer

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.

Artistic brilliance and innovative programming are the trademarks that have earned Nils Mönkemeyer a reputation as one of the
world’s most successful violists, dramatically raising the profile of his instrument.

Under his exclusive contract with Sony Classical, Mönkemeyer has released numerous CDs over the past years, all of which have
won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. His programmes run the gamut from rediscoveries and first recordings of original
18th-century viola literature, to contemporary repertoire and arrangements of his own.

Nils Mönkemeyer works together with conductors such as Andrej Boreyko, Sylvain Cambreling, Elias Grandy, Christopher
Hogwood, Cornelius Meister, Mark Minkowski, Kent Nagano, Michael Sanderling, Clemens Schuldt, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Markus
Stenz, Mario Venzago and Simone Young, performing as a soloist with ensembles including Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Helsinki
Philharmonic Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berne Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche
Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Dresden Philharmonic, Hamburg Philharmonic, Frankfurter
Opern- und Museumsorchester, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Weimar Staatskapelle,
Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra and Berliner Barock Solisten.

In the season 2021/22 he can be heard performing with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen and Kristiina Poska on a tour through BeNeLux and Estland, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and in Vienna, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, at the Schubertiade, Niedersächsische Musiktage, Heidelberger Frühling and Mozartfest Würzburg. Further highlights of the season are concerts with Sabine Meyer and William Youn and with the Julia Fischer Quartett.

Furthermore, he is pursuing a heartfelt wish as a musician to build bridges with music by making it accessible to the disadvantaged.
To this end, Nils Mönkemeyer founded the chamber music festival “Klassik für Alle” in 2016, in collaboration with the charity
Caritas Bonn.

Mönkemeyer has been a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich since 2011 – the same institution at
which he himself studied with Hariolf Schlichtig.

Nils Mönkemeyer plays a viola made by Philipp Augustin.