Vladimir Jurowski

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the conductor Vladimir Yurovsky. At thirty five he's widely considered to be the best of his generation, lauded for his technique, personality, panache, and brains. He speaks the language of music, say the critics, in a way that transcends period style.

Presenter0:44

A fact which may owe something to his beginnings. His father, too, was a conductor, his grandfather, a composer.

Presenter0:50

And although home was an unprepossessing tower block apartment in Moscow, the three rooms he shared with his parents, sister, brother, and two grandmothers were always full of music. Beyond that was simply more of the same. I was five or six when I saw my first opera, he says. I literally grew up in the wings of a theatre. Vladimir, was there ever any chance that your life would be anything but music?

Vladimir Jurowski1:17

Well, I think the chance was always there, and in a way I also got encouraged by my father not to take on music, because he was once told by his father if you can do something else, then do something else, because it must be like a disease.

Presenter1:34

So consciously of course there was a life beyond music that you may have been encouraged towards, but but emotionally then was it simply that music was there somewhere?

Vladimir Jurowski1:42

Well, music was the air I used to breathe, and I could never have thought back then, and as I can't think now, my life without music.

Presenter1:54

You made your international debut in nineteen ninety five in Ireland. I mean, you had only just turned twenty three. I mean, after that performance in Wexford the phone started ringing. I mean, virtually off the hook, you had La Fenici in Venice and the Bastille in Paris asking you to come to them, and yet you you turned down those offers. Why?

Vladimir Jurowski2:14

Well, I d I didn't turn down all of them, but I did turn down some. Most well, b most of those I wasn't sure about. Uh I turned down four first from Covent Garden. I mean I went there in the first place to stand in last minute and did Nabucco and it sort of went well, as well as it could go under the circumstances. But I realized the higher you climb,

Vladimir Jurowski2:42

the higher the danger to fall down and break your neck. So I started saying no, because I wasn't ready, and I also never envisaged the profession of a conductor.

Vladimir Jurowski2:55

in order to become a star.

Presenter2:57

Tell me about the first desert island disc that you've chosen.

Vladimir Jurowski3:00

Bach's Goldberg variations, uh, with Glenn Gould, his second recording of it from nineteen eighty one, because as you know, Gould recorded the piece twice in the studio, once in nineteen fifty five, and then shortly before he died in'81. And these two recordings are separated by light years, because in the first one you see a highly gifted young musician storming into his first Bach, and the second one is is a work of a mature genius. It's eternity.

Presenter4:31

Glenn Gould playing part of Bach's Gouldberg variations. I mentioned in the introduction, Vladimir, part of the the background that you lived as a small child in Moscow. I described it as a home full of music, but I'm wondering literally if it was. I mean, your father had hundreds of LPs, presumably there were manuscripts. W was the sound of music in this apartment?

Vladimir Jurowski4:52

Well, the sound was was unstoppable, because he would bring singers home and they would practice till late at night. We had very, very patient neighbours, I must say.

Presenter5:04

And this was in a three-room apartment in uh Tower Court.

Vladimir Jurowski5:06

Yes, yes, yes. But c you know, compared to the apartment where where I was born and where my sister was born, which was a two room apartment, the three room apartment was huge.

Presenter5:18

So, as you say then, your father was a conductor, and he he took you along as a little boy to performances.

Vladimir Jurowski5:23

My father took me along to some of his rehearsals, so sometimes I was allowed to sit in the pit, just behind or between the musicians. But I was m to be honest much more interested in what was going on on stage.

Presenter5:37

Uh

Vladimir Jurowski5:37

And

Presenter5:38

The costumes and the

Vladimir Jurowski5:38

Theatre

Presenter5:39

Yeah.

Vladimir Jurowski5:39

In the costumes, the theatre, the movements, dancers and singers.

Presenter5:42

Can you remember now what you were absorbing as a little boy? Are there particular memories that stand out?

Vladimir Jurowski5:48

It was everything, it was the colors, the smells, and the excitement, it is like a permanent Christmas, being in the theatre.

Presenter5:57

And watching your father conduct, does do you have any memories of that?

Vladimir Jurowski5:59

Yes, of course, and I remember after a while when my ears got rather sensitive to what was going on in the pit as well, I did notice all of the mistakes musicians were making, and it always made me incredibly nervous, because I always thought, My gosh, this guy makes a mistake and they will all blame my father and I also remember wondering how does my father memorise all these various conducting movements, because I was convinced that he really learned all of his movements by heart.

Presenter6:33

At the grand old age of thirty five, now, then, was this do you think this was an an invaluable initiation?

Vladimir Jurowski6:39

Yes, it was, because I got infected with the music and the theatre all at once.

Presenter6:46

Tell me about your second choice today.

Vladimir Jurowski6:48

I think Beethoven's Sevenths is one of the most joyous works ever written in the European music tradition. It's a mixture between some kind of a very austere procession like ritual dance, maybe funeral procession. It's definitely a tragic piece of music, but it still fills you with the joy for being alive and being able to listen to this music. And I think Kleiber and the Viana Philharmonic convey this emotion more and better than anybody else I know.

Presenter8:28

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra playing the opening of the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Seven, conducted by Carlos Kleiber, you described him whilst we were listening to that as a a complete genius, I think, were the words that you used. Do you have to be something of a a loner, an outsider, to successfully conduct? Somebody who is happy to set themselves apart?

Vladimir Jurowski8:50

Well, I think one needs to be a little bit of both. One needs to be in the first place a great communicator. Then, in order to have the ideas, or renew them or review them, you have also to be able to stand back and go away from people. That's why a lot of my colleagues I know avoid being in public when they're not working and prefer to go into the mountains or into the woods. And conduct is permanently torn apart between these two extremities.

Presenter9:25

That's a fascinating insight, and I want to talk about that maybe in some more detail later on. For for now I'm interested, though, uh about this little boy, the little Vladimir, and wh when did your proper education in music begin?

Vladimir Jurowski9:36

Well, it began in Moscow. I started music lessons at age five.

Presenter9:42

And at the same time you were taking part in the conventional educational system of of the Soviet Union?

Vladimir Jurowski9:47

Yes, of course I continued the primary and secondary school, where there were also things called music lessons, but they were literally not not to be noticed.

Vladimir Jurowski9:58

Um

Presenter9:59

What were you doing? Were you uh just sitting in the corner ignoring the teacher, or?

Vladimir Jurowski10:02

Well, I was trying to be absent. No, I wasn't I was not a very apt pupil at school, not at all.

Presenter10:09

How did your classmates in The Normal school?

Presenter10:12

View you.

Vladimir Jurowski10:13

They they always sort of accepted me being slightly strange, slightly different, so instead of going and playing football with them I would go and have my silly music lessons.

Presenter10:25

In those early teenage years, of course, you were still living in Communist Russia, but this was the time of Glasnost and Ferostroikai. The openness was coming, the restructuring of the system. Did that mean anything to you, practically?

Vladimir Jurowski10:38

Well, it started meaning a lot to me because a lot of the books which were banned before came up and and I was a passionate reader. Some of the things I read then showed me through.

Presenter10:51

What? What sort of bee

Vladimir Jurowski10:52

Well to be exposed to the truth about the Soviet concentration camps and the activity of the secret police. A lot of the things people sort of knew, but it never came to light in such an exposed way. And it did influence me very strongly. It also did influence my agreement with the decision of my parents to leave the country.

Presenter11:15

I'm wondering how much you were affected growing up by the this Soviet collective consciousness, if you like, that we we are all pulling in the same direction, we all subscribe to a certain way of being and living.

Vladimir Jurowski11:27

Well, it was part of the unwritten codex of the Soviet intelligentsia to be swimming against the stream. And although we we never talked a lot about politics at home, this is something I sort of adopted from the very early age on, that we are different for all sorts of reasons. But inevitably growing up in this collective consciousness did influence me, and I don't think only in a negative way, because I think it's one of the ways to avoid the ego dominance.

Presenter12:08

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Vladimir Jurowski12:09

Well the next piece of music was actually a revelation to me as a piece. I'm talking of Bach's Christmas Oratoria. So this was considered religious propaganda by the Soviet authorities, and so there were no recordings of the piece, and it was never performed live until, I think, nineteen eighty eight. And for me this piece is the symbol of the hope and symbol of the joy of human existence. It's also the symbol of Christmas.

Speaker 313:16

Leave them to inside.

Presenter13:37

The opening of the third cantata from Bach's Christmas Oratoria, conducted by Nicholas Armancour with the consentus musicus vienne, chosen by my castaway today, Vladimir Yurofski, for you said it's hope and it's joy, Vladimir. I I want to ask you about the possibility of becoming a musician. Uh the piano was your principal instrument as a teenager. Did you think that you might become a pianist?

Vladimir Jurowski14:01

No, I always knew I wouldn't, simply because I wasn't too good for it. And after a while I realized that I should probably leave it as a hobby of mine and move on to something something else. And th this something else became musical theory.

Presenter14:17

I wonder if, given the description that that you gave us so vividly earlier of the fear that you had of a musician playing something wrongly, or people wrongly interpreting watching your father as he conducted, that in a sense you were putting off the decision that you had to embrace conducting, which was probably your natural home.

Vladimir Jurowski14:36

Well, maybe from the Freudian point of view, yes, it was a way just to put it off for longer. Maybe it was also in a way an act of self denial, because I noticed after I started studying conducting professionally, it started changing me as a person, almost on a cellular basis. I changed even visually. And I think now, through the conducting, I got to being what is my natural form. I'm I feel it right in the centre. I don't think I was in the centre as a child.

Presenter15:13

At what point did you decide that conducting was for you?

Vladimir Jurowski15:17

Well, it was probably around the age of seventeen, eighteen. It all started with me hearing Marlus music for the first time. Um

Presenter15:28

Can you remember the moment?

Vladimir Jurowski15:30

Oh yes. I was already at college and uh I heard the symphony number five and it was it was like a whole new world opened itself in front of me and all the things I always felt inside me on the emotional level, also on the intellectual level, I somehow felt I understand every note of this music intuitively, and even what's between the notes, and I couldn't explain it. And there was another experience around the same time when I heard and saw Leonard Bernstein performing live in Moscow. That was also one of the cases where I thought if somebody is able to communicate the music in such a way to hold hundreds of people completely still and then shaking with excitement, and doing this simply by the means of music. And it was not about his personal success as a conductor, it was the effect of his music making, which was so unique and so emotionally charging. So I chose Leonard Bernstein conducting the Viana Philharmonic yet again, and it's Adagietto from Mahlo Symphony No. Five.

Presenter17:49

Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic playing, part of Mahler's Symphony No. five. You hinted a few moments ago at the difficulty of deciding, acknowledging that yes, indeed it was conducting that you wanted to pursue but then you decided what did your father make of that decision?

Vladimir Jurowski18:06

Well, I think he was relieved to see that this wish of mine was based upon some talent I possessed, some basic skills. And I think that was a very Soviet thing, because there were a lot of sons of famous fathers who succeeded without having any talent. And so he gave me immediately some advice and also my first lessons I got from him.

Presenter18:31

How did that go?

Vladimir Jurowski18:32

Uh difficult.

Vladimir Jurowski18:34

He is a very good teacher, but a very, very demanding one, and um he wouldn't forgive anything, quite understandably.

Presenter18:42

Paint me a picture then. I mean were there tears? Were there arguments? Were there well

Vladimir Jurowski18:45

Well, the tears were before whenever I had the piano lessons with him as a child. It always ended in tears. But by the time I started having conducting lessons with him, I was already eighteen, and I was very determined. So I was already a different kind of a son, and he started seeing in me somewhat of an equal.

Presenter19:11

You yourself used the word uh Freudian earlier when we were talking. I wonder how much uh

Vladimir Jurowski19:13

Yeah.

Presenter19:17

competition how much testosterone there was in the room.

Vladimir Jurowski19:21

What I know is that by then there was definitely no competition. I never thought I would ever be as good as my father. So I felt if I were going to be half as good as him, I'd be very happy.

Presenter19:35

Do you feel you're as good as him now?

Vladimir Jurowski19:37

Uh I'm different. I'm very different. I think I'm a professional conductor.

Presenter19:43

This autumn, then, you're going to take over as the principal conductor at the London Philharmonic, one of our great orchestras, of course. How much is your job navigating the egos of your musicians?

Vladimir Jurowski19:54

As much as navigating the music.

Presenter19:57

But really?

Vladimir Jurowski19:57

Really? Uh but you have to know which egos are important part of the music making, and which egos can be sort of blended into the whole.

Presenter20:10

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Vladimir Jurowski20:11

Well, it's Niklaus Harnunkua again, but this time it's Mozart. Actually, the one piece by Mozart which I would have taken with me to the desert island is The Magic Flute, but there is not a single recording of the piece which would be entirely to my satisfaction. And um Requiem was written around the same time. It's one of the later works and definitely one of the most mature, enigmatic, and wonderful works of his.

Presenter21:42

The Consentus Musicus Vienne, performing the confutatas from Mozart's Requiem in D minor, conducted by Nicolas Armancourt. So you left Moscow when you were eighteen. Your father got a job with the Dresden Opera. You continued your studies there. When you arrived, the the wall had come down and unification was in the process. Did your family move there because your father got a job there, or did your family move there because they realized that was the place for their son and the rest of their family to to flourish?

Vladimir Jurowski22:10

Yes, of course the letter is is more correct. But also they wanted to leave already many years ago. I simply wasn't aware of it. They were on the brink of leaving the country back in seventy four when I was only two years old.

Presenter22:23

Do you know why they took the decision not to?

Vladimir Jurowski22:25

Because of uh the grandmothers they objected, they they said they wouldn't leave the graves of their husbands, and my parents were not strong enough to take the decision and leave without them, so they stayed and in a way it was a good thing, at least for me and for my sister and my brother, because we grew up the way we grew up, we would have been different people.

Presenter22:48

What was your first experience of the West, Ben?

Vladimir Jurowski22:51

Well, it was hard to call it West what we found in Germany because we came to Dresden, which was deep inside Eastern Germany. It was only when I moved to Berlin I was exposed much more to the Western feel. And in a way it was a soft transition.

Presenter23:12

Right, I see. So Dresden was

Presenter23:15

A halfway house.

Vladimir Jurowski23:16

But yes.

Presenter23:17

And then when you first experienced Berlin, what struck you?

Vladimir Jurowski23:20

Well, Berlin was this amazing mixture of completely incompatible cultures, this very, very East and the most hilarious, frantic uh West, because West Berlin, in a way, was more Western than than the whole of Western Germany together. But West Berlin, the island in the Red Sea, is gone. This is past now. But I found Berlin extremely exciting much more exciting, let's say, than Dresden.

Presenter23:54

Now, you were in your early twenties when you married and then had a a child. For somebody whose life had been dedicated up until that point to his music and to learning the skills of conducting, that's quite a commitment to make. Did you find combining the two difficult?

Vladimir Jurowski24:11

Yes and no. Um yes, because our daughter was born two weeks after I came back from my Wexford debut. So when we planned her we didn't we never planned it, when we made her, I didn't have even the slightest prospect of any career. I was still a student. So Wexford came very much last minute and from the schedule it looked as though we could make it.

Presenter24:38

But I I was thinking that I mean the arrival of a baby is not, as you well know, a precise sign. So when you were in Wexford, about to take to the stage for the first time in your early twenties, in the back of your mind was always the possibility you would get the call.

Vladimir Jurowski24:50

Oh yeah. And I was I was prepared to go.

Presenter24:54

I mean, it must it must have felt like everything was happening at once. There was this professional explosion for you and at the same time the huge, uh, joyful, traumatic melange of having uh a wife and uh this brand new baby.

Vladimir Jurowski24:58

Yeah.

Speaker 324:58

Yeah.

Vladimir Jurowski24:59

Ocean

Presenter25:07

Yeah.

Vladimir Jurowski25:07

Mm.

Vladimir Jurowski25:08

For this I was very much a Russian in that I believed in fate, and I still do so I thought if it is coming this way then it must be true, and it must be necessary.

Presenter25:19

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Vladimir Jurowski25:21

Well, I thought there must be at least one disc with the piano songs only and that obviously the paradigma of European art song is Schubert. And the Winteralse, it's Dietrich Fischer Diskow and Gerald Moore on the piano. Again a paradigmatic couple. Fischer Diskow used to collaborate a lot with the Svatoslav Richter. I was lucky enough to meet him in Germany and even accompany singers in his master classes. So this is one of the most important musical personalities in my personal development.

Speaker 426:03

One delicious dear, first mechan.

Speaker 426:11

Minds to hold

Speaker 426:13

Why that boy here light and life too faster

Speaker 426:24

Molles Wirt nicht wit weer green and snipped rich of the glory.

Presenter27:03

Dietrich Fischer Dieskau singing The Crow from Schubert's Derby Interreisse with Gerald Moore on piano. You you spoke earlier about being a boy growing up under the Soviet system and then in your teens you moved to Germany, you took on German citizenship and and now you live much of your time in England.

Presenter27:21

Each journey you make you become the outsider in a way, the Soviet boy in Germany, then the German citizen in England. Um do you feel any of that? Are you comfortable with feeling a little on the margins?

Vladimir Jurowski27:33

I do feel it and I'm more than comfortable in being on the margins. Actually, I think this is what makes us develop further, is exposing ourselves to next challenges and also stripping away the comfortable.

Presenter27:50

I mean, you've conducted all over the world now, of course, and for the past six years you've been the musical director at Glinebourne. I'm wondering.

Presenter27:57

What do you make and given that the first few years of your life were spent in Soviet Russia, and and what an impression you've said that that made upon you. I wonder what you make as you watch the very epitome of the English upper crust go about their fun at Leinbourne of a summer.

Vladimir Jurowski28:13

Well, I think there are two sides to it. One side is this, and obviously this is something which is extremely exotic for uh somebody who comes from outside the English cultural world. You know, dinner jackets and evening dresses and dinners on the loan, it's not a real high society. I mean, some of them are, but a lot of people, you know, save money for the whole year just to be able to go and have a night out in the most posh and and flamboyant way. And I find this absolutely acceptable.

Presenter28:52

You are also principal guest conductor at the Russian National Orchestra. I mean, how often do you return to Moscow and how do you find it when you're home?

Vladimir Jurowski28:59

Well, not often enough. Um I still feel myself to be part of this old system, although I only grasped maybe one of the last flashes of it, but I still feel belonging to this big tradition and I have in a way enriched this tradition by blending it together with the German and British culture which I also absorbed. And well I'm trying to convey to them the fruits.

Presenter29:29

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Vladimir Jurowski29:31

This is a piece I connect a lot of personal memories with when I moved to Germany. That was one of the first pieces I heard. It's Arvo Pertz double concerto or two violins called Tabula Razza. It's a very spiritual, very simple music, but it has an incredible depth to it and actually the more you listen to it, the more complexity you discover.

Presenter30:58

The last movement of Arvo Part's Concerto Taboro Rasa performed by Giron Kremer, Tatiana Gridenko, and Alfred Schnitke. I wonder if your father, the conductor, comes to watch you conduct.

Vladimir Jurowski31:11

He does whenever he can. It's always a very special night for me whenever he is in the audience, because I always feel exposed, apart from the usual stress, to the additional very, very critical couple of ears and couple of eyes.

Presenter31:30

He does give you his opinion then subtly.

Vladimir Jurowski31:33

He always does, so I don't have to ask for it twice.

Presenter31:35

Do you think you've made him proud?

Vladimir Jurowski31:37

I think I at times succeed in making him proud, but it stopped being a worry of mine, because we have our own goals and aims to pursue, and in order to discover mine I had also to sort of get a step back from him.

Presenter32:00

There was a time when your father was gravely ill, and and you were due to conduct. What happened?

Vladimir Jurowski32:05

Well, he had a heart attack conducting in Berlin. Uh he collapsed at the podium and um was dead, clinically dead, for a couple of minutes. I was in Berlin too, and I came to the theater as soon as I could, and he was put in an artificial coma. So he was saved. But we didn't know whether he would wake up or not. And the next day I had a performance at the Com Schooper, which I couldn't cancel. It was La Bohem. So that was quite a m memorable evening for me.

Presenter32:39

There are very, very few jobs where somebody would say I could not cancel. I mean, is the pressure so great, the pressure of the booking, the expectation from the musicians, the tickets sold, the whole mechanism that

Vladimir Jurowski32:51

Yeah, and you are you are the servant of this bigger machine, which is the theatre. I mean, if I were a guest conductor somewhere, I would have cancelled without any hesitation. But it was my company, and I was part of it. But it was a difficult one.

Presenter33:07

as you described yourself, one of one of the final generation to live under Communist Soviet rule. I I wonder if there's been a personal legacy for you that you take through as you as you describe it, this journey, it's a constant journey that you're on.

Vladimir Jurowski33:20

Yeah, this is where my roots lie and although this place literally doesn't exist anymore, but it does exist in my memories and I've taken a lot from there and probably the most important thing I've taken from there that the journey is never over. I don't know what else is gonna happen on my way. I'm sure many more unexpected and exciting and interesting things, but I feel I'm open and prepared for anything to happen.

Presenter33:48

Tell me about your final piece of music.

Vladimir Jurowski33:50

Well, funny, we're talking about the lifetime task which is never fulfilled. It's the only Russian piece of music I chose and it's Tchaikovsky Symphony No. Six, here conducted by Evgeny Morvinsky and played by the Leningrad Philharmonic. Evgeny Moravinsky served with the Leningrad Philharmonic for over fifty years, and the recording which I chose is the last existing recording of his, which is nineteen eighty two. I think for me Mravinsky is this symbol of the lifelong dedication to one high spiritual task, and even in this last performance he still would have things to develop and to criticise on himself.

Presenter35:34

The Leningrad Philharmonic playing part of the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. Six, conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky. So, at this part of the game, I give you the Bible, and I give you the complete works of Shakspere, Vladimir, and you get to take a book of your own. What will that book be?

Vladimir Jurowski35:51

Well, since you graciously gave me the complete works of Shakespeare, I don't feel it would be a cheat if I say I want another complete works of Pushkin.

Presenter36:03

Yes, you may have that and also we give you a luxury to make life a little more bearable on this island.

Vladimir Jurowski36:09

I think I would take my piano with me.

Presenter36:12

And if I was to force you to choose just one disk to take, which one would it be?

Vladimir Jurowski36:17

Bach and Goeberg variations with Glengold.

Presenter36:21

Vladimir Yorovsky, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Vladimir Jurowski36:25

Thank you.

Presenter36:32

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.