Vladimir Jurowski & Christian Tetzlaff
Artist-in-Residence Concert 1
Anna Korsun
“Terricone” for symphony orchestra
Alban Berg
Concerto for violin and orchestra
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 73
Vladimir Jurowski
Conductor
Vladimir Jurowski - Conductor
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.
Christian Tetzlaff
Violin
Christian Tetzlaff - Violin
“In every aspect of his expression, Tetzlaff strives for the maximum… It couldn’t be more intense.” – Süddeutsche Zeitung
Violinist Christian Tetzlaff is highly acclaimed for his expressive, sensitive, and personal interpretations. His individual approach to the score, in which he always seeks the emotional and structural depth of the composition, has earned him a loyal following over the years, who often describe his performances as an existential experience. Since his spectacular debut with Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto in 1988 in Berlin, Munich, and Cleveland, he has performed with leading orchestras of the highest caliber, including the Berlin, Vienna, and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and many others. His extensive repertoire ranges from Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas to lesser-known concertos by Giovanni Battista Viotti and Joseph Joachim to contemporary works by György Ligeti, Jörg Widmann, and Thomas Ades. In 2023, he took over as artistic director of the SPANNUNGEN Festival in Heimbach, Germany.
During the 2025/26 season, Tetzlaff will appear several times as artist-in-residence with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing violin concertos by Berg, Suk, and Dvořák, as well as chamber music with Vladimir Jurowski. In February 2026, he will give the world premiere of Ondrej Adamek’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in Paris, followed by national premieres in Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
Other highlights of the season include duo concerts with Leif-Ove Andsnes, solo recitals in Berlin, Oslo, and London, and concerts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
Tetzlaff works with many of the leading conductors, including Herbert Blomstedt, Karina Canellakis, Maxim Emelyanychev, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Harding, Manfred Honeck, Jakub Hrůša, Marie Jacquot, Paavo Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Cristian Măcelaru, Andris Nelsons, Gianandrea Noseda, Sakari Oramo, Sir Antonio Pappano, Kirill Petrenko, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, John Storgårds, Robin Ticciati, and Juraj Valčuha.
Chamber music is an integral part of his career. In 1994, he founded the Tetzlaff Quartet together with his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff. The ensemble tours every season and will perform in Germany and the UK in 2025/26. The Tetzlaff Quartet was awarded the Diapason d’or l’année in 2015 for its recording of Berg’s Lyric Suite and Mendelssohn. Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff also perform regularly as a trio with pianist Kiveli Dörken.
His extensive discography, mainly on the Ondine label, has been honored with the German Record Critics’ Annual Prize, several Diapason d’or awards, and the Midem Classical Award. Recent highlights include Sibelius with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Nick Collon, and Brahms’ piano quartets, the last recordings of the late Lars Vogt. Elgar and Adès’ violin concertos with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and John Storgårds will be released in fall 2025. He has recorded Bach’s works for solo violin three times, most recently in 2017.
Christian Tetzlaff plays a violin made by luthier Peter Greiner. He teaches at the Kronberg Academy and lives in Berlin with his wife, photographer Giorgia Bertazzi, and their three children.
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Moving Mountains
It makes sense that the percussionists have to work hard in Anna Korsun’s 15-minute work “Terricone” (2022). The term “terricones” refers to those landscape-altering, man-made heaps of dead rock, often inaccessible for long periods of time, that remain after the mining of ores, salts, or coal. These mountains of solid waste can also occur in landfills of garbage. Anna Korsun, a singer, pianist, organist, conductor, and composer born in Ukraine in 1986, has undertaken the task of translating this into music for symphony orchestra. Her spectacular works experiment with noise-orientedorchestral colours and unusual sonic techniques, sometimes incorporating the human voice.
Alban Berg began composing his deeply moving violin concerto immediately after the death of Manon Gropius. The 19-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius had died of polio on April 22, 1935. Berg dedicated the work “To the memory of an angel.” In August 1935, he completed the score at his summer house on Lake Wörthersee—on the opposite shore, Johannes Brahms had composed his violin concerto in 1878. Alban Berg himself died in December 1935, so that the violin concerto became not only his compositional legacy, but also his own requiem.
“…if I let you hear a symphony in winter, it should sound so cheerful and lovely that you believe I wrote it especially for you or even your young wife! That’s no feat, you might say, Brahms is clever, Lake Wörth is unspoiled territory, the melodies fly around so much that you have to be careful not to step on any.” What Johannes Brahms is raving about to Eduard Hanslick here concerns Symphony No. 2. It was written in 1877 in the same summer house as the violin concerto the following year. Compared to his first symphony, this time everything flowed very quickly: four months of composition compared to fourteen years, D major instead of C minor – a flyweight, a light-hearted encore to his first symphony.
Concert broadcast: Radio 3 will broadcast the concert live from 8:03 p.m.
Jazzik – “An American in Paris”
Adès, Weill, Shostakovich, Gershwin
Vladimir Jurowski conducts Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8
Bruckner