Season opening at the Berlin Music Festival

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.

Widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time, Pierre-Laurent Aimard has had close collaborations with many leading composers including György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, Pierre Boulez and Oliver Messiaen.

Aimard begins the 2022/23 season receiving Denmark’s most prominent music award, the Leonie Sonning Music Prize 2022 which will be celebrated in a series of concerts with Royal Danish Orchestra/Cambreling and recitals in Copenhagen and Aarhus. Elsewhere he continues to work closely with leading orchestras and conductors across Europe including Antwerp Symphony/Herreweghe, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest/Deneve, Deutsche Symphony Orchester Berlin/Chan, Orchestre National de Lille/Bloc and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. He continues his collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen, recording Bartok’s complete piano concertos due for release in Autumn 2023, and returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4.

In celebration of György Ligeti’s 100th Anniversary in 2023, Aimard will perform works by the composer in collaborations throughout the season, including, Seoul Philharmonic/Robertson for his Concerto for Piano; acclaimed German Jazz pianist, Michael Wollny on an improvisatory project around the Etudes and continuing to celebrate the composer through his unique recital programming.

In other chamber projects, highlights include collaborations with Tamara Stefanovich for Visions de l’Amen at the Boulez Saal and continued partnerships with Mark Simpson and Jean-Guihen Queyras for trio recitals including works by Lachenmann in Luxembourg and Vienna. Together with Isabelle Faust and Jorg Widmann, Aimard joins Queryas for Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps touring the work across Spain in the Autumn.

Orchestral successes of the 2021/22 season included collaborations with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Chung, Munich Philharmonic/Nagano, Bamberg Symphoniker/Honeck, Seattle Symphony Orchestra/Stasevska, hr-Sinfonieorchester/Altinoglu, Vienna Symphony/Afkham and the World Premiere of Klaus Ospald’s concerto with WDR/Poppe. In recital and chamber projects, Aimard continued to champion contemporary composers, performing works by Birtwistle, Lachenmann, Cage, Schoenberg and Andre in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt as well as Messiaen’s colossal Vingt Regards in Paris and Amsterdam. In the UK highlights included Saffron Walden for Bach’s Well Tempered Klavier and the Edinburgh Festival to perform his Fantasy recital programme.

Having recently released a new disc of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and Eroica Variations for Pentatone to great critical acclaim, Aimard releases a new recording of Visions de l’Amen with Tamara Stefanovich in September 2022. Recent seasons have also included Messiaen’s opus magnum Catalogue d’oiseaux which was honoured with multiple awards including the prestigious German music critic’s award “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.” Aimard has also performed the world premieres of piano works by Kurtág at Teatro alla Scala; Carter’s last piece Epigrams, which was written for him; Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s works Responses; Sweet disorder and the carefully careless and Keyboard Engine for two pianos which received its London premiere in autumn 2019.

Through his professorship at the Hochschule Köln as well as numerous series of concert lectures and workshops worldwide, Aimard sheds an inspiring light on music of all periods. He was previously an Associate Professor at the College de France, Paris and is a member of Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste. In spring 2020, he re-launched a major online resource Explore the Score, after several years work, which centres on the performance and teaching of Ligeti’s piano music in collaboration with the Klavier-Festival Ruhr.