Has Vladimir Jurowski ever had a bad review? I scour the musical press fairly diligently and I’ve never come across one. As far as British critics are concerned, it seems, the 35-year-old maestro wields not a baton but a magic wand.

Which is just as well, because we will be seeing a lot of him. As the London Philharmonic Orchestra returns to the refurbished Festival Hall, Jurowski takes over as principal conductor. That’s been an appointment predicted for years, because the LPO sounds like a band reborn under his baton. But he is also Glyndebourne’s music director. And there, too, the love affair between Russian conductor and British musicians shows no sign of cooling. “This is my sixth season,” he says. “I feel at home. The company is my family.”

What makes this quintessentially English festival so special for a Moscow boy? “First, the very long rehearsal process, and the fact that nobody, including myself, is allowed any N/As [performers declaring themselves “not available” for certain shows or rehearsals]. That means you can achieve a total unity of musical and theatrical interpretation. And because of the wonderful acoustics you can achieve a much wider range of dynamics. In many opera houses you start at mezzo-forte. Here you can achieve real pianissimos – even the pppppp that Verdi specifies in Macbeth.

“Then there’s the most brilliant stage management I have ever come across – a bunch of very intelligent, sophisticated, mostly young people. The scene changes required in Richard Jones’s staging of Macbeth would have ruined this production almost anywhere else. And the chorus is special too: young, enthusiastic and talented. So all in all it’s a fantastic machine. And after five years I think I am getting to grips with all its handles. One day I believe I might achieve real results.”

Most people would say that real results are already evident. Jurowski’s pulsating and impeccably Verdian handling of Macbeth, for instance, won universal acclaim – even from those who detested Jones’s staging. But the conductor believes he has only just started to explore Glyndebourne’s possibilities.

“Some operas you should not do here,” he says. “ Aida, Nabucco, War and Peace, Turandot. But in my inner eye and ear I can imagine Meistersinger working. With the exception of two scenes it’s a chamber opera.”

I point out that Wagner’s longest opera would need to start soon after dawn to incorporate the mandatory Glyndebourne supper interval. Jurowski shrugs. I get the feeling that his patrons’ quaffing arrangements are not top of his list of priorities.

“The only other limitation is that we can’t do more than three new productions a year,” he continues. “So I will need about 25 years to fulfil all my Napoleonic plans.”

Glyndebourne would probably give him 25 centuries, if he asked for it. When he started there he was a brilliant newcomer: the mercurial son of a belittled Jewish-Russian conductor who had emigrated to Germany. Now he is ranked among the top five maestros in the world.

But there is one more facet to Glyndebourne’s “fantastic machine” that Jurowski wants to talk about. That is what he calls the “unique luxury” of having two contrasting orchestras to call upon. The first is his own LPO, which has now played for 44 Glyndebourne seasons. The other is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. When the latter was brought in, 18 years ago, it was very much to play 18th-century operas – specifically Mozart and Han-del – on period instruments, leaving the LPO to play later repertoire. But Jurowski has decided that this division of labour is too restrictive.

“Obviously I want each orchestra to do what it does best,” he says. “But it’s important to give everyone the chance to grow artistically.” So next week he is using the OAE for La Cenerentola– the first time, he believes, that Rossini will have been heard on period instruments in a British opera house. “It’s very early Rossini, so it’s an epoch these players have covered many times. But Rossini has a very specific orchestral style they will have to capture.”

As for the LPO, it has been assigned Così fan tutte, which the OAE played last year. Jurowski believes that when the symphony orchestras renounced 18th-century music in the face of competition from period-instrument bands, they were turning their backs not only on good repertoire but important disciplines.

“It’s essential for modern orchestras to be able to play earlier repertoire stylishly,” he says. “That’s why I did La Cenerentola last season with the LPO. I want the LPO to tackle Baroque pieces too. Similarly, I can imagine the OAE playing Donizetti, even early Wagner and Verdi – Macbeth, for instance. The period instruments would add to the score’s weirdness.”

This is a strange time for Jurowski. Halfway through Glyndebourne’s season he would normally be focused on opera. But the reopening of the Festival Hall (which, he says, has “positively surprised” him with its enhanced acoustics) has wrested his mind to things symphonic. When he and the LPO were temporarily camping at the smaller Queen Elizabeth Hall, he seized the chance to dig out much fascinating repertoire, mostly from the mid-20th century, that London had rarely heard before.

“Well, I’m afraid there is more to come,” he grins, and rattles off a list of pieces by the likes of Honegger, Frank Martin, Zemlinsky, Korngold, Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Schnittke. “Obviously we can’t abandon the great works of the repertoire, but I have always been concerned to programme them to make artistic points, not just to attract crowds.”

One thing is certain. Jurowski’s LPO concerts will never lack thought or meticulous preparation. How will they compare with what his compatriot Valery Gergiev and the LSO offer at the Barbican? Not since Solti and Abba-do were our resident maestros have London’s music-lovers anticipated such mouthwatering competition.

— La Cenerentola opens at Glyndebourne (01273 813813) on Jun 17. The LPO and Jurowski play at the Festival Hall (0871 6632500) on Mon and Wed

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