Jubilee concert 100 Years RSB

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.

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.

“Simone Lamsma played splendidly, with crisp clarity and brightly radiant sound, conveying both the rhapsodic fervor and intriguing pensiveness of the music.“ (The New York Times, December 2018)

Hailed for her “brilliant… polished, expressive and intense” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) and “absolutely stunning” (Chicago Tribune) playing, Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma is respected by critics, peers and audiences as one of classical music’s most striking and captivating musical personalities.

With an extensive repertoire, Simone has been the guest of many of the world’s leading orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Gürzenich Orchester, Helsinki Philharmonic, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, MDR Sinfonieorchester, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony, Les Siécles, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Belgian National Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Simone performed with such eminent conductors as Jaap van Zweden, Antonio Pappano, Paavo Järvi, Gianandrea Noseda, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Louis Langrée, Gustavo Gimeno, Karina Canellakis, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Marc Albrecht, Stéphane Denève, Vassily Petrenko, Domingo Hindoyan, Michael Francis, Simone Young, François-Xavier Roth, Olari Elts, Duncan Ward, Juraj Valcuha, John Storgards, Omer Meir-Wellber, Edward Gardner, Kent Nagano, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, James Gaffigan, Sir Mark Elder, Daniel Raiskin, Edo de Waart, Andris Poga, Jun Märkl, Kevin John Edusei, Jaime Martin, Jader Bignamini, Petr Popelka and Mark Wigglesworth.

Highlights of the 2023/24 season include Simone being Artist in Residence at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and debuts with the Wiener Symphoniker on tour with Jaap van Zweden, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center New York and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, both under new music director Jonathon Heyward. Simone will play with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin and music director Vladimir Jurowski for the orchestra’s 100th anniversary celebration at the Berlin Philharmonie. She will also return with such orchestras and conductors as  the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival under Fabien Gabel, the Antwerp Symphony under Elim Chan at the Concertgebouw, the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Tarmo Peltokoski, Paris’ Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Jaap van Zweden, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal with music director Rafael Payare, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw under Osmo Vänskä, Tokyo’s Yomiuri  Nippon Symphony Orchestra under Kazuki Yamada, Torino’s Orchestra Sinfonica della RAI with Alpesh Chauhan, Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchester with Roberto Treviño. That season will also be the third and last of Simone’s 3-year residency at the Oregon Symphony Orchestra.

In 2022 her most recent recording was released to great acclaim, featuring late works by Rautavaara, including a world première, with the Malmö Symphony and Robert Trevino for the Ondine label. Other recordings include Shostakovich’s first violin concerto and Gubaidulina’s In Tempus praesens with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under James Gaffigan and Reinbert de Leeuw on Challenge Classics and a recital album of works by Mendelssohn, Janáček and Schumann  with pianist Robert Kulek, also on Challenge Classics.

In 2019, Simone was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London, an honour limited to 300 former Academy students, and awarded to those musicians who have distinguished themselves within the profession.

Katharine Mehrling lives in Berlin, where she has won the Golden Curtain audience award six times as the city’s most popular actress, for performances in productions including Arizona Lady, Ball at the Savoy and My Fair Lady at the Komische Oper Berlin. She was also awarded the Berlin Bear (BZ Culture Prize) in 2016.

She studied acting and musical theatre at the London Studio Centre and at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York. She made her stage debut in London’s West End, at the Old Vic Theatre as Chrissy in Hair, going on to take the title and leading roles in Irma la Douce, Piaf, Cabaret, End of the rainbow (Judy Garland), Kiss me Kate, The Threepenny Opera, Tell me on a Sunday, Next to normal, Funny Girl and Evita at Vienna’s Ronacher Theater. She created the role of Tippi Hedren in the musical The Birds of Alfred Hitchcock by William Ward Murta, written especially for her.

She also appeared in the Hollywood movie Valkyrie.

Her love of jazz and French chanson is reflected in her live performances and on several CDs, including Hommages, Bonsoir Katharine, Piaf au Bar, Mehrling au Bar, Vive la vie, In love with Judy and Am Rande der Nacht (At the edge of the night), which she wrote with jazz legend Rolf Kühn.

Since their collaboration on Paul Abraham’s jazz operetta Ball at the Savoy, Katharine Mehrling and Barrie Kosky have enjoyed a special artistic friendship. Their collaboration Lonely House, premiered in December 2019 at the Komische Oper Berlin, focuses on Kurt Weill’s exile in Paris and New York. At the Edinburgh Internationalen Festival 2021 Mehrling & Kosky performed two concerts with their Kurt Weill evening LONELY HOUSE, which received 5-star reviews in the British press.

In 2022 Katharine Mehrling represents the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau as Artist in Residence.

Wolfgang Hentrich devotes himself in particular to conducting the Dresden Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. As soloist, he has performed with Marek Janowski, Walter Weller, Sir Neville Marriner, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Markus Poschner and Andrew Litton.
The artist’s diverse repertoire ranges from baroque music to cyclical performances of violin sonatas by composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms and Grieg, as well as joint performances with the rock musician Dirk Zöllner. His CD productions include various violin concertos, orchestral works by Johann Strauß, Mozart’s sonatas for piano and violin and works by Paganini for violin and guitar. Following the example of the legendary Viennese concertmaster Willi Boskovsky, Wolfgang Hentrich has conducted numerous New Year’s Concerts of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Orchestra Chemnitz. As guest concertmaster he has regularly with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2009 and has performed the operas the operas of Richard Wagner under the direction of Marek Janowski.
Together with music-loving amateurs, he founded the Fördervereinsorchester der Dresdner Philharmonie in 2002, conducts large choral concerts and leads the Chorus 116 in Dresden. In the programmes he conceives, he regularly integrates world premieres into his programmes.
Wolfgang Hentrich is honorary professor for violin at the Dresden Academy of Music and devotes himself with special programmes for children and young people. Since August 2013 he has been chief conductor of the Deutsche Streicherphilharmonie. The intensive work with the 11 to 20 year old musicians has become a matter close to his heart and occupies a large part of his artistic life. and occupies a large part of his artistic life. In 2023, Wolfgang Hentrich and the young string young string talents will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Deutsche Streicherphilharmonie.

Ralf Sochaczewsky received conducting lessons under Christian Grube and Marc Piollet at the Berlin University of the Arts. Later he studied choir conducting under Jörg-Peter Weigle and orchestral conducting under Prof. Reuter at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler”.

He directs the Berlin choir Cantus Domus, with which he won a 1st prize at the Berlin Choir Competition in 2017 and a 3rd prize at the 8th Choir Competition of the Deutscher Musikrat in Dortmund . From 1998 to 2012, he conducted the Ensemberlino Vocale choir and successfully participated in choir competitions (1st prize at Chorfest Bremen (Bremen Choir Festival) 2008).

He regularly works with choirs like the Berlin Vocalconsort, the Cappella Amsterdam, the RIAS Kammerchor, and the Berliner Rundfunkchor.

In 2016, he conducted the European premiere of the oratorio “Anthracite Fields” by Julia Wolfe, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015, with the DR Vocalensemble and Bang on a Can-All Stars.

Ralf Sochaczewsky has performed with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the National Radio Orchestra Bucharest, and the Chamber Orchestra of the Minsk Philharmonic. He conducted operas at the Bolshoi Theatre Moscow, the Komische Oper Berlin, the Opera National du Rhin, and the Lithuanian National Opera.

Ralf Sochaczewsky collaborated with various pop groups and artists such as Stargaze and André de Ridder, Bon Iver, Damien Rice, Lisa Hannigan, and Tocotronic. With Cantus Domus, he is a regular guest at festivals such as HaldernPop and KalternPop.

He teaches choral conducting at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler”. For his great service to the Berlin choir scene, the Chorverband Berlin awarded him the Geschwister Mendelssohn Medal in 2017.