Season opening at Musikfest Berlin

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 2029,
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.

With around 60 concerts annually, CD recordings, and international performances, the Rundfunkchor Berlin is one of the world’s leading choirs. Three Grammy Awards alone stand as a testament to the quality of its recordings. Its wide-ranging repertoire, flexible, richly nuanced sound, flawless precision, and compelling presence make the professional choir a partner of choice for prominent orchestras and conductors, including Kirill Petrenko, Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. In Berlin, the choir has an intense collaboration with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, as well as with their chief conductors.

The Rundfunkchor Berlin also attracts international attention with its interdisciplinary projects, which break the traditional concert format and offer new ways of experiencing choral music. A milestone was the staged interpretation of Brahms’ Requiem as a “human requiem” by Jochen Sandig and a team from Sasha Waltz & Guests. After performances in New York, Hong Kong, Paris, and Adelaide, the production traveled to Istanbul for the first time in the summer of 2019. For the project LUTHER dancing with the gods, the choir reflected on Luther’s impact on the arts and within the arts in a genre-defying concert performance with Robert Wilson and music by Bach, Nystedt, and Reich. For TIME TRAVELLERS, the choir will transform the Berliner Radialsystem into a walkable time tunnel in the 2019/2020 season. Based on Jonathan Dove’s composition The Passing of the Year, the project will create an interactive choral experience with films, images, performance, and music.

Through its community projects targeting diverse audiences – such as the large sing-along concert at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Festival of Choral Cultures for choirs from around the world, and the Song Market for Berlin students – the Rundfunkchor Berlin aims to inspire as many people as possible to sing. Its comprehensive educational program SING! focuses on the sustainable networking of various partners to promote singing as a natural part of Berlin’s elementary school curriculum. With the Academy and Schola, as well as the International Master Class Berlin, the ensemble is committed to nurturing the next generation of professional singers and conductors.

Founded in 1925, the Rundfunkchor Berlin celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2015. The choir has been shaped by conductors such as Helmut Koch, Dietrich Knothe (1982–93), Robin Gritton (1994–2001), and Simon Halsey (2001–2015). Since the 2015/16 season, Dutch conductor Gijs Leenaars has been the chief conductor and artistic director of the ensemble. Simon Halsey remains connected to the choir as an honorary conductor and guest conductor. The Rundfunkchor Berlin is an ensemble of the Rundfunk Orchester und Chöre GmbH Berlin, under the sponsorship of Deutschlandradio, the Federal Republic of Germany, the State of Berlin, and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg.

Gijs Leenaars has been at the helm of the Rundfunkchor Berlin as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since the 2015/16 season. Since then, he has worked with outstanding conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Gijs Leenaars conducts cross-genre concert performances such as the “human requiem” or “LUTHER dancing with the gods” and is responsible for recordings of a cappella repertoire and choral symphonic works. In the 2019/20 season, he will conduct the major festival of choral cultures and the transdisciplinary project “TIME TRAVELLERS”. He will also conduct Bruckner’s Mass in E minor in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a work that will also be released on CD with this instrumentation.

Born in Nijmegen in 1978, the Dutchman is one of the most interesting choral conductors of the younger generation. He studied piano, choral and orchestral conducting and singing in Nijmegen and Amsterdam. His collaboration with the Dutch Radio Choir in Hilversum began immediately after graduating. From 2012 to 2015, he was chief conductor of the ensemble and worked as such with Mariss Jansons, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Bernard Haitink. He is also a regular guest conductor of the Collegium Vocale Gent, the Cappella Amsterdam and the Nederlands Kamerkoor. He has also worked with orchestras such as the Dutch Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest Den Haag and the Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino.

He is particularly interested in performing contemporary music. For example, Gijs Leenaars conducted the Dutch premiere of Wolfang Rihm’s “Vigilia”, and for the complete recording of Kurtág’s works under Reinbert de Leeuw, he worked on the choral works with the Dutch Radio Choir. In his programs, he combines classical repertoire with rarely heard works of choral literature.