On June 22, it was announced that the musicians of the celebrated Berlin Philharmonic (BPO) have elected their first-ever Jewish music director, the Russian maestro Kirill Petrenko. Not only was this choice ground-breaking, it was an indirect response to another job candidate, the German conductor Christian Thielemann whose right-wing politics and anti-immigrant feelings seemed to grab as many headlines as his music-making of late. Petrenko himself is indubitably an immigrant; he was born in 1972 in Omsk and emigrated to Austria in 1990. He served as general music director at Berlin’s Komische Oper from 2002 to 2007 and has been director of the Bavarian state opera since 2013. His contract there runs until 2018, so he is expected to take over the BPO soon afterwards. The Berlin players already know him well, as he has worked as guest conductor there in 2006, 2009, and 2012. Compared to his immediate predecessors at the BPO, the Englishman Simon Rattle and Italian Claudio Abbado, he may well prove to be less of a fish out of water
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