Conductor: Vladimir Jurowski
Mezzo-soprano: Aigul Akhmetshina

Richard Wagner
Overture to Tannhäuser (Dresden version)
Wesendonck Lieder

Richard Strauss
Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28
Suite from the Opera Der Rosenkavalier

* All information on programme, artists and duration is subject to change.

 

 

 

Vladimir Jurowski, born in Moscow, began his musical training at the Moscow Conservatory and continued it at the conservatories in Berlin and Dresden. He made his international debut as an opera conductor in 1995 at the Wexford Festival with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Mainacht. In the same year, he made his debut at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London with Nabucco. Since then, he has made guest appearances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Opéra national de Paris, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the Semperoper in Dresden and the Salzburg Festival, among others. From 1997 to 2001, he was First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin and subsequently Music Director of the Glyndebourne Festival until 2013. From 2007 to 2021, he was Chief Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and has been Conductor Emeritus there ever since; he has also been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) since 2017. He is also Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and was Artistic Director of the International George Enescu Festival in Bucharest and the Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra “E. F. Svetlanov” until 2021. He regularly collaborates with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the ensemble unitedberlin.

 

He has appeared as a guest conductor with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the symphony orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia. In the 2015/16 season, he made his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper in an academy concert with Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 3, among others; he subsequently conducted a new production of his opera Der feurige Engel. He also conducted the new production of Der Rosenkavalier in the 2020/21 season. He has been General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera since 2021 and has conducted the premieres of Nos / Die Nase, Die Teufel von Loudun, Così fan tutte, Krieg und Frieden, Hamlet, Die Fledermaus, Die Passagierin and Das Rheingold in addition to a series of concerts. In 2024 he was appointed Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by His Majesty King Charles III.

 

 

Mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina studied at the Ufa Conservatory, took part in the Estate Stellare Festival in Italy and participated in masterclasses with Ildar Abdrazakov, Barbara Frittoli and Delfo Menicucci. Her competition successes include the Grand Prix at the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, 3rd prize at the Sonora International Opera Competition Francisco Araiza and the bronze medal at the Youth Delphic Games in Russia. From 2017, she was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, where she gained acclaim with role debuts such as Mercédès and the title role of Carmen, Preziosilla (La Forza del Destino), Flora (La Traviata) and Sonjetka (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) and where she has since returned as Lola (Cavalleria Rusticana), among others. Since then, she has appeared at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera, the Zurich Opera House, the Opéra national de Paris, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Wexford Festival Opera, the Israeli Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the New National Theatre Tokyo as well as at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden (Polina in Pique Dame), the Opéra de Baugé Festival and the Glyndebourne Festival. Her repertoire also includes Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) and the title role in La Cenerentola, Maddalena (Rigoletto), Fenena (Nabucco) and Olga (Eugene Onegin). She made her debut at the Bavarian State Opera in 2023 with the title role in Carmen; she was also a soloist in the “Opera for All” concert in summer 2024.

 

 

In 2023, the Bayerische Staatsorchester celebrated its five hundredth anniversary, making it one of the oldest and most traditional ensembles in the world. Based in the Bayerische Staatsoper, the orchestra and its 144 members perform both in the orchestra pit and on the concert platform. In 2024, the orchestra was voted Orchestra of the Year for the tenth time in a row and for the twelfth time overall in the critics' survey conducted by Opernwelt magazine and was also honored at the Grammophone Awards in London for its recordings on the Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings label as an opera and symphony orchestra (for Die tote Stadt and The Snow Queen as well as for Mahler's Symphony No. 7) - an unprecedented success in the history of the Grammophone Awards.

In 1811, members of the former court orchestra founded the Musikalische Akademie e. V. association, which established Munich's first public concert series with the Academy Concerts. To this day, the Musikalische Akademie and its activities continue to shape the musical life of Munich and the Free State of Bavaria. The activities in Munich are complemented by numerous guest performances and concert tours, which regularly take the orchestra to the world's most important music centers.

The Bayerische Staatsorchester staged several premieres, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Idomeneo and Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg as well as Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. Many of the most important musical personalities of their time led the orchestra as chief conductors: from Hermann Levi, Richard Strauss, Felix Mottl, Bruno Walter and Hans Knappertsbusch to Sir Georg Solti, Joseph Keilberth, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano and Kirill Petrenko. The orchestra also had a close relationship with Carlos Kleiber. With the 2021/22 season, Vladimir Jurowski has taken over the management of the Bayerische Staatsorchester as Bavarian General Music Director.