Shakespeare!

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.

Ian Bostridge’s international recital career has taken him to the Salzburg, Edinburgh, Munich, Vienna, St Petersburg, Aldeburgh and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade Festivals and to the main stages of Carnegie Hall and the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. He has held artistic residencies at the Vienna Konzerthaus and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade (2003/04), a CarteBlanche series with Thomas Quasthoff at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (2004/05), a Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall (2005/06), the Barbican, London (2008), the Luxembourg Philharmonie (2010/11), the Wigmore Hall (2011/12) and Hamburg Laeiszhalle (2012/13). In 2018 Ian began an auspicious Artistic Residency with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the first of its kind for the ensemble.

His recordings have won all the major international record prizes and been nominated for 15 Grammys. They include Schubert Die schöne Müllerin with Graham Johnson (Gramophone Award 1996); Tom Rakewell The Rake’s Progress with Sir John Eliot Gardiner (Grammy Award, 1999); and Belmonte with William Christie. Under his exclusive contract with Warner Classics, recordings included Schubert Lieder and Schumann Lieder (Gramophone Award 1998), English song and Henze Lieder with Julius Drake, Britten’s Our Hunting Fathers with Daniel Harding, Mozart’s Idomeneo with Sir Charles Mackerras, Janáček’s The Diary of One who Disappeared with Thomas Adès, Schubert with Leif Ove Andsnes, Mitsuko Uchida and Antonio Pappano, Noel Coward with Jeffrey Tate, Britten Orchestral cycles with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, Wolf with Antonio Pappano, Bach cantatas with Fabio Biondi, Handel arias with Harry Bicket, Britten Canticles and both Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (Gramophone Award, 2003) and Billy Budd (Grammy Award, 2010), Adès’ The Tempest (Gramophone Award 2010) and Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Recent recordings include Schubert songs with Julius Drake for Wigmore Hall Live; Shakespeare songs (Grammy Award, 2017) and Requiem: The Pity of War with Antonio Pappano for Warner Classics and Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Eté, Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Debussy’s Le Livre de Baudelaire arr. John Adams with Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

He has worked with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Chicago, Boston, London and BBC Symphony orchestras, the London, New York, Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras and the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam under Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Andrew Davis, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding and Donald Runnicles. He sang the world premiere of Henze Opfergang with the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome under Antonio Pappano.

His operatic appearances have included Lysander A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Opera Australia and at the Edinburgh Festival; Nerone L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Tom Rakewell and Male Chorus The Rape of Lucretia for the Bayerische Staatsoper; Don Ottavio for the Wiener Staatsoper; Tamino Die Zauberflöte, Aschenbach Death in Venice and Jupiter Semele for English National Opera; Peter Quint The Turn of the Screw, Don Ottavio Don Giovanni and Caliban Adès The Tempest for the Royal Opera House; Madwoman Curlew River in the Netia Jones staging for the London Barbican, which was also seen in New York and on the west coast of America; Peter Quint for the Teatro alla Scala and Handel’s Jeptha at the Opéra National de Paris.

Concert performances and other notable events have included the War Requiem with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski; Les Illuminations with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Andris Nelsons; European, American and Asian recital tours of Schubert’s Winterreise with Thomas Adès; Britten’s War Requiem with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Antonio Pappano and Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot. His book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, 2016) was published by Faber and Faber in the UK and Knopf in the USA in 2014. In the 2018/19 season he took up a residency with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

Recent engagements have included a European recital tour with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau which featured a new composition by Mehldau; a world premiere of a new commission by James MacMillan with the London Symphony Orchestra for the WW1 centenary, staged performances of the Zender Winterreise, directed by Netia Jones, in Shanghai, recordings of the three major Schubert song cycles live at the Wigmore Hall with pianists Lars Vogt and Thomas Adès, recital tours in Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, as well as a European concert tour with Europa Galante.

Highlights of the 2019/20 season included his return to the operatic stage at the Deutsche Oper as Aschenbach Death in Venice; a tour of the USA with Brad Mehldau; performances of Schubert’s Winterreise at the Cartagena Music Festival in Colombia and a concert tour with Lucerne Festival Strings through Slovenia and Italy. He will appear as Evangelist (Matthew Passion) in Torino and as Bajazet in Handel’s Tamerlano with the Moscow State Philharmonic.

He was a fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1992-5) and in 2001 was elected an honorary fellow of the college. In 2003 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Music by the University of St Andrews and in 2010 he was made an honorary fellow of St John’s College Oxford. He was made a CBE in the 2004 New Year’s Honours. In 2014 he was Humanitas Professor of Classical Music at the University of Oxford.