Live concert on the radio:
With Gidon Kremer

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.

Benjamin Kobler was born in 1973 in Munich and grew up in the inspiring atmosphere of a family involved with music and the theatre. He started learning the piano at the age of 5, that was soon followed by the cello, composition and conducting lessons.
His most influential piano teachers were Carmen Piazzini and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Along with the studies of the piano, he also had lessons with Peter Eötvös in contemporary chamber music. Highlights in his career up until now include concerts in Carnegie Hall, New York and his performance as a soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle.

He began to work with Ensemble Modern in 1995, and became a member of Ensemble Musikfabrik in 2007. Due to this work he has been able to very easily come into contact with artistic personalities such as György Kurtag, György Ligeti, Steve Reich and Zoltan Kocsis. He has performed world Premières from Vykintas Baltakas, Nikolaus Brass, Orm Finnendahl, Enno Poppe, Henri Pousseur and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Along with his teaching at the Stockhausen courses in Kürten, he has had the opportunity to pass on his knowledge at a number of colleges of music. He is also a welcome guest at numerous international festivals.

His decision for contemporary music, after having wandered through phases of jazz, classical and operatic repertoire, was quite easy because the burning question for him is how music can emotionally move people. Answers to this question can be found by not only playing the music himself, but also by having the opportunity to closely question the composers, or to ask them to sing a passage so that they can clearly express what they intend, as music notation can portray only part of what the piece is about.
Along with the contemporary repertoire, Benjamin Kobler hopes to be able to closely study the classical repertoire in the future.

Driven by his strikingly uncompromising artistic philosophy, Gidon Kremer has established a worldwide reputation as one of his generation’s most original and compelling artists.
His repertoire encompasses standard classical scores and music by leading twentieth and twenty-first century composers. He has championed the works of Russian and Eastern European composers and performed many important new compositions, several of which have been dedicated to him. His name is closely associated with such composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Edison Denisov, Aribert Reimann, Pēteris Vasks, John Adams, Victor Kissine, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, Leonid Desyatnikov and Astor Piazzolla, whose works he performs in ways that respect tradition while being fully alive to their freshness and originality. It is fair to say that no other soloist of comparable international stature has done more to promote the cause of contemporary composers and new music for violin.

Gidon Kremer has recorded over 120 albums, many of which have received prestigious international awards in recognition of their exceptional interpretative insights. His long list of honours and awards include the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis, the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Moscow’s Triumph Prize, the Unesco Prize and the Una Vita Nella Musica – Artur Rubinstein Prize. In 2016 Gidon Kremer has received a Praemium Imperiale prize that is widely considered to be the Nobel Prize of music.

In 1997 Gidon Kremer founded the chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica to foster outstanding young musicians from the Baltic States. The ensemble tours extensively and has recorded almost 30 albums for the Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon, ECM labels. In 2016/17 Kremerata Baltica was on landmark tours through Middle East, North America, Europe, and Asia to celebrate the orchestra’s 20th anniversary.

2019 Gidon Kremer was honoured at the Konzerthaus Berlin with a major “Homage to Gidon Kremer”. in the 2019/2020 season, he himself pays tribute to the revered composer Weinberg on his 100th anniversary with many concerts. Deutsche Grammophon is releasing two albums with orchestral and chamber music works by Weinberg, recorded by and with Gidon Kremer.