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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.

Celebrated worldwide as one of today’s leading violinists, Arabella Steinbacher has been praised as the “queen of the evening” for her “brilliant playing”, “extraordinary sound” and “softly blossoming tone”.

Highlights of the 18-19 season include appearances in Australia and New Zealand with the Sydney, Queensland, and Auckland Symphony Orchestras, a performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Sir Roger Norrington, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, a tour of Germany with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and a tour of Japan with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Fabio Luisi.

Steinbacher frequently appears with world-class orchestras around the globe including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. She has made acclaimed performances with the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Sao Paulo Symphony, Orchestra National de France, Vienna Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated with conductors including Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, Riccardo Chailly, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph Eschenbach, Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowski, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Thomas Hengelbrock.

Her latest recording with Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski features the Hindemith and Britten violin concertos. Arabella Steinbacher has been recording exclusively for Pentatone Classics since 2009.

Among many international and national music prizes and nominations, she has been twice awarded the ECHO Klassik.

As CARE ambassador, Steinbacher is driven to use music as a means to uplift and support those in need. She launched a December 2011 Japan tour in response to the tsunami disaster earlier that year. The DVD release “Arabella Steinbacher – Music of Hope” featured her outreach, and youth recitals from this tour and was released shortly after.

Born into a family of musicians, Steinbacher has played the violin since the age of three and studied with Ana Chumachenco at the Munich Academy of Music since the age of nine. A source of musical inspiration and guidance of hers is Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis.

Steinbacher currently plays the 1716 “Booth” Stradivari, generously loaned by the Nippon Music Foundation.

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.

In recent years, Staatsoper Unter den Linden Children’s Choir has made a name for itself as an ensemble on the opera stage and in concert appearances in Germany and abroad. Repeated invitations to guest tours (to Dresden, Hamburg, Italy, France, Luxemburg, Poland, the Baltic States, and to Vietnam) and prizes at several competitions (including the gold medal at the international competition »Siauliai Cantat« in Lithuania, First Prize, Landeschorwettbewerb Berlin 2013, first prize at Deutscher Chorwettbewerb in Weimar 2014 and two gold medals at the international Choral Competition in Hoi An/Vietnam 2015) attest to the growing artistic quality of the choir, which has been under the direction of Vinzenz Weissenburger since 2007.

For some time now, the musical repertoire and the public presence of the chorus has been constantly expanding. Central are the chorus’ regular appearances on the stage at the Staatsoper in operas such as La Bohème, Un ballo in maschera, Tosca, Turandot, Boris Godunov, Pique Dame, Der Rosenkavalier and Carmen. In addition, the chorus also appears in its own concerts, with a cappella programs and a concert with the Staatskapelle Berlin once every season.

The chorus meets twice a week for rehearsal, and offers a thorough basic musical training for its young singers. Vocal training takes place with several experienced vocal teachers, who together with the choir conductor and his assistants work at improving the artistic standards. Recent concert tours have taken the chorus to Argentina, China and to the U.S.