Spiral of Life

Vladimir Jurowski has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2017. He has meanwhile extended his contract until 2027. In parallel, he has been General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich since 2021.

After receiving training at the Moscow Conservatory The conductor, pianist and musicologist Vladimir Jurowski emigrated to Germany in 1990. Here he continued his studies at the music conservatories in Dresden and Berlin.  In 1995 he made his international debut at the British Wexford Festival with Rimski-Korsakov’s Mainacht and in the same year at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with Nabucco. Subsequently he was, among other things, First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997- 2001) and Music Director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001-2013). In 2003 Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and has been its Principal Conductor since 2007 until 2021. He was also Artistic Director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra Yevgeny Svetlanov of the Russian Federation until 2021, Artistic Director of the International George Enescu Festival in Bucharest and Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Great Britain. He works regularly with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the ensemble unitedberlin.

Vladimir Jurowski has conducted the major orchestras of Europe and North America, including the Berlin, Vienna and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, 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 Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

He is a recurring guest conductor in in London, Berlin, Dresden, Luzern, Schleswig-Holstein und Grafenegg as well as at the Rostopowitsch-Festival. Although Vladimir Jurowski is invited as a guest conductor by top orchestras from all over the world, in future he would like to concentrate his activities on that geographical area which is acceptable to him from an ecological point of view.

In 2022/2023 he performed with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin in concerts in various cities in Germany, Italy and Antwerp in the Netherlands. The joint CD recordings of Vladimir Jurowski and the RSB began in 2015 with Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3, followed by works by Britten, Hindemith, Strauss, Mahler and soon again Schnittke.

Vladimir Jurowski has been the recipient of numerous awards for his achievements, including various international record prizes. In 2016, he was bestowed an honorary doctorate from Prince Charles at the Royal College of Music in London. In 2018, the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards named him Conductor of the Year. In summer 2020, Jurowski was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Romanian President in recognition of his work as Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival.

Violinist Daniel Hope has enjoyed a thriving international solo career for more than 30 years. Celebrated for his musical versatility and dedication to humanitarian causes, he has been recognized with a string of honors including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the 2015 European Culture Prize for Music. Hope is Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and Music Director of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra.

In 2019 he completed his 16th and final season as Associate Artistic Director of Georgia’s Savannah Music Festival and became Artistic Director of Dresden’s Frauenkirche Cathedral. In 2020 Hope  was elected as President of the Beethovenhaus Bonn.

Hope first drew notice as member of the Beaux Arts Trio. Today he is a familiar face at the most prestigious international venues and festivals. He works with conductors including Valery Gergiev, Kurt Masur, Simon Rattle, and Christian Thielemann, and with the world’s foremost ensembles. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Hope has commissioned more than 30 new works, collaborating closely with prominent composers.

Hope has been recognized with awards including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or of the Year, the Edison Classical Award and the Prix Caecilia. His recording of Max Richter’s “Vivaldi Recomposed” topped the charts in 22 countries and remains one of the bestselling classical releases of recent times. In 2017, a documentary titled “Daniel Hope – The Sound of Life” was screened in movie theaters.

Hope has written scripts for collaborative performances with the actors Klaus Maria Brandauer and Mia Farrow. In Germany he presents a weekly radio show for the WDR3 Channel and curates and hosts “Hope@9pm”, a salon-style music and talk at the Berlin Konzerthaus.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, he created and hosted “Hope@Home”, a livestreamed TV series featuring music and talk with guest artists ranging from Barrie Kosky over RSB chief conductor Vladimir Jurowski to Robert Wilson. Professionally produced from Hope’s Berlin living room for the ARTE TV network, the daily series was streamed almost five million times. “Hope@Home” was developed into “Hope@Home on Tour” and “Hope@Home – Next Generation” in the course of the year, then being developed into “Europe@Home”, in which young artists represent the music of the 27 member states of the European Union.

Hope was also guest of the RSB in a livestreamed radio concert under the baton of Jurowski in the spring of 2020.

He has been working closely with his mentor Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he gave numerous concerts.