Vladimir Yurovsky

Vladimir Yurovsky

b. 1972 (Moscow)

Vladimir Yurovsky is a Russian and German conductor. He was born in Moscow on April 4, 1972, into a musical family. His father, Mikhail Yurovsky, was a conductor, and his grandfather, Vladimir Yurovsky, was a composer. His great-grandfather David Blok was also a conductor. His younger brother, Dmitri Yurovsky, is a conductor, and his sister, Maria Dribinski, is a pianist and music educator.

From 1987 to 1990, Yurovsky studied music theory at the music college attached to the Moscow Conservatory. In 1990, he moved with his family to Germany and continued his studies at the Dresden University of Music, then with Rolf Reuter at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.

Yurovsky made his international debut in 1995 at the Wexford Opera Festival in Ireland, conducting Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera May Night. He conducted at Berlin’s Komische Oper from 1996 to 2000 and served as artistic director of the Glyndebourne Festival from 2001 to 2013 and again from 2017.

As an opera conductor, he has worked with the Opéra Bastille in Paris, La Scala in Milan, La Fenice in Venice, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His repertoire includes Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Verdi’s Rigoletto and Otello, Puccini’s La bohème and Turandot, and Wagner’s Parsifal. Among his less usual operatic projects was the concert premiere of the complete version of Vladimir Martynov’s Vita Nuova.

Yurovsky made his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2001, became its principal guest conductor in 2003, and led it as chief conductor from 2007. In 2017, he became chief conductor of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. He was appointed general music director of the Bavarian State Opera in 2018, with the appointment taking effect in the 2021–22 season.

From 2011 to 2021, Yurovsky was artistic director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia. With the orchestra, he performed works that were rarely heard in Russia, including music by Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg, Edison Denisov, Olivier Messiaen, Benjamin Britten, Bohuslav Martinů, Alban Berg, Carl Orff, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and John Tavener. He continued working with the orchestra as honorary conductor after leaving the artistic director post. He has also conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and has led educational concert series in Moscow.

Yurovsky received the Franco Abbiati Prize as Conductor of the Year in 2000. In 2004, BBC Music Magazine named him among the world’s most talented young conductors, and in 2007 he received the Royal Philharmonic Society Award. He received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Music in London in 2016 and was named an honorary professor at Moscow State University that year. His later honors include the Opus Klassik Conductor of the Year award in 2022 and appointment as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2024.

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