Vladimir Jurowski

It is uncommon for a conductor to earn worldwide recognition so soon after emerging, yet Vladimir Jurowski rose to prominence with remarkable speed and continues to advance. At the age of 23 he led his first professional performance, presenting Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night at Ireland’s Wexford Festival in 1995.

Born in Moscow on April 4, 1972, he is the son of the distinguished conductor Michail Jurowski and the grandson of composer Vladimir Mikhailovich Jurowski. He began intensive training at the Moscow Conservatory during his teenage years. When the family relocated to Germany in 1990, he continued his studies under Rolf Reuter. Before his stage debut, Jurowski made his initial recording for ECM Records in 1994, capturing Kancheli’s cantata Exil.

The success of his Wexford engagement quickly brought an invitation to Covent Garden, where he conducted Verdi’s Nabucco later that same season. His first commercial opera recording, issued by Marco Polo in 1997, preserved a live performance of Meyerbeer’s seldom-heard L’étoile du nord from the 1996 Wexford Festival across three discs. Concert engagements soon followed, resulting in a succession of increasingly prominent orchestral appointments.

Following his Wexford and Covent Garden appearances, Jurowski joined the Komische Oper Berlin as assistant to Yakov Kreizberg for the 1996–1997 season and was named kapellmeister the next year. He departed that post in 2001 to become music director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, a position he held until 2013. During the same period he also served three seasons as principal guest conductor of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. In 2003 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 2005 he assumed the same role with the Russian National Orchestra. Two years later he became the London Philharmonic’s principal conductor; his tenure was renewed repeatedly, concluding with his designation as conductor emeritus after the 2020–2021 season. He was among ten conductors who endorsed and took part in a major initiative to bring classical music into schools. In 2015 he was named chief conductor and artistic director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, with his contract later extended through 2027. The Bavarian State Opera announced his appointment in 2018, effective from the 2021–2022 season onward. He additionally served as principal artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

His leadership of the London Philharmonic positioned him among the most active conductors of the 2000s and 2010s. His discography centers on late-Romantic repertoire, Russian and non-Russian alike, ranging from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 (“Eroica”) to contemporary scores. In the United States he has appeared repeatedly with the Philadelphia Orchestra, while returning to Russia for engagements and recordings with both the Russian National Orchestra and the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation. In 2020 he collaborated with Nicola Benedetti on a Decca recording of Elgar and with Alina Ibragimova on a Hyperion set of Shostakovich violin concertos. Live albums of Stravinsky ballets performed with the London Philharmonic continued to appear in 2022 and 2023 despite pandemic restrictions. By that point his recorded output exceeded seventy-five albums.