Shakespeare!

Vladimir Jurowski is one of the most sought-after conductors of our time, enjoying international acclaim for his outstanding musical ability and a consistently adventurous artistic approach. He has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) since September 2017. He was born in Moscow, where he began his musical education at the conservatoire. In 1990, he and his family moved to Germany, where he completed his studies at the colleges of music in Dresden and Berlin. His international debut was at the Wexford festival as well as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1995.

Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003, becoming its Principal Conductor in 2007. In addition, he is Artistic Director of the Russian Academic State Orchestra “Yevgeny Svetlanov”, Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Artistic Advisor to the “ensemble unitedberlin”. In 2015 he was also appointed Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. It was announced in March 2018 that he is to become Generalmusikdirektor of the Bavarian State Opera as from the 2021/2022 season. In the past he has held positions including First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997-2000) and Musical Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001-2013). In March 2016 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Music in London.

Vladimir Jurowski conducts top orchestras in Europe and North America, such as the Dresdner Staatskapelle, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, and the New York Philharmonic, as well as the Berlin and Vienna philharmonic orchestras. He also appears regularly at international festivals such as the BBC Proms, and since 1995 he has worked at major international opera houses, incl. at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Welsh National Opera, the Scala in Milan, the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Dresden Semper Opera.

He returned to Glyndebourne Opera in 2017 for the world premiere of Brett Dean’s “Hamlet” and shortly afterwards he made his debut at Salzburg Festival with Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck”. In 2018 he conducted new productions of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” at the Opéra National de Paris and Franz Schreker’s “Die Gezeichneten” at Zurich Opera House.

His extensive, frequently prizewinning discography now includes three recordings with the RSB for PENTATONE, interpreting works by Schnittke, Mahler, Strauss, Hindemith and Britten.

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.