Season finale with Shostakovich & Tchaikovsky

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.

Julia Fischer has been at the top of the world’s violin elite for 20 years. She also expresses her artistic diversity as a pianist, chamber musician and professor. As  the first artist in the field of classical music, she founded her own music platform, the JF CLUB.

As the daughter of  of German-Slovakian parents born in Munich, she  received her first violin lessons at the age of three. Shortly afterwards her mother Viera Fischer gave Julia Fischer her first piano lessons.  At the age of nine  she was accepted as a junior student of the renowned violin professor Ana Chumachenco at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich. In 2011, Julia Fischer took her position at the very same institute from her former teacher.

Recent highlights of her career include concerts with the New York Philharmonic (Philippe Jordan), the Orchestre National de France (Emmanuel Krivine), with the Bavarian State Orchestra (Kirill Petrenko), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Riccardo Muti), the Cleveland Orchestra (Franz Welser-Möst), the Vienna Philharmonic (Esa-Pekka Salonen) or the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich (Herbert Blomstedt).

Julia Fischer regularly conducts the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, which has long been associated with her, and in May 2022 she will go on tour with the London orchestra, making   stops in Germany, Talinn, Barcelona and Madrid. Julia Fischer is Artist in Residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the current season with numerous performances in London and across Europe. She also performs, among other, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Vasily Petrenko), the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Vladimir Jurowski) and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (Michael Tilson Thomas).

Julia Fischer is also an enthusiastic chamber musician. The Julia Fischer Quartet with her long-time chamber music partners Alexander Sitkovetsky, Nils Mönkemeyer and Benjamin Nyffenegger will be touring again in January 2022. A recording of Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet was made in autumn 2020 together with Oliver Schnyder, Andreas Janke, Nils Mönkemeyer and Benjamin Nyffenegger for the JF CLUB. In November 2021 she went on another recital tour with Yulianna Avdeeva.

In 2017, Julia Fischer founded her own music platform, the JF CLUB, where her new recordings can be heard exclusively and where she provides insights into her work trough articles, videos or even personal meetings. With this, she is taking a new and individual path in the classical music market. In August 2021, Eugène Ysaye’s sonatas were released as a limited vinyl-edition in an exclusive JF CLUB edition .

Julia Fischer has previously released numerous CD and DVD recordings, first for  the Pentatone label and then for Decca. Her recordings have been met with the highest praise from internationally pioneering media and received numerous awards, including the BBC Music Magazine Award, the Choc der Monde de la Musique, the Diapason d’Or de l’Année or the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

Teaching is especially close to Julia Fischer’s heart. She feels a great need to be able to pass on something of her own childhood experiences. Her students have been very successful and are already being invited by major orchestras. Occasionally Julia Fischer performs together with them.

In the summer of 2019, Julia Fischer founded the Kindersinfoniker, an orchestra for children aged 6 to 14, which she leads together with the pianist Henri Bonamy and the conductor Johannes X. Schachtner. Julia Fischer also regularly gives master classes at the music holidays at Lake Starnberg.

Many awards honour the artist, she received the Federal Cross of Merit, the Bavarian Order of Maximilian and prizes such as the internationally highly regarded Gramophone Award or the German Culture Prize. She was included in the Century Violinist CD Edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Julia Fischer plays on a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1742) as well as on a new violin by Philipp Augustin (2018).