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Boris Kuschnir, born in Kyiv in 1948, studied violin with Boris Belenkij and chamber music with Valentin Berlinskij at the Moscow Conservatory. Influenced by Dmitri Shostakovich, with whom he collaborated on the late quartets, and David Oistrakh, his career began in 1969 after winning the All-Union Competition in Leningrad, where he performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov.
A professor in Vienna since 1984 and in Graz since 1999, Kuschnir has trained renowned violinists such as Julian Rachlin, Nikolaj Znaider, Maria Dueñas, and Sergey Dogadin, whose numerous competition victories attest to the excellence of his teaching. He is also an honorary professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.
Kuschnir founded the Vienna Schubert Trio and the Brahms Trio, winning numerous prestigious awards, and has performed in renowned venues such as the Vienna Musikverein, La Scala in Milan, and Wigmore Hall in London. He holds the Grand Decoration of Honour of Austria and the Austrian Cross of Honour.
Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt is considered one of the great German cellists and is also a highly sought-after conductor. A laureate of the Rostropovich, Tchaikovsky, and Leonard Rose competitions, he has performed as a soloist with prestigious orchestras such as the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Sinfonia Varsovia, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Houston Symphony, under the direction of Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowski, Jiri Belohlavek, among others. A passionate chamber musician, he has performed alongside Lang Lang, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, and Leonidas Kavakos, and was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two at Lincoln Center in New York. His recordings with Sony Classical and Capriccio have received critical acclaim and were awarded a Diapason d’Or and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Founder and principal conductor of the Metamorphosen Berlin ensemble, he regularly conducts this orchestra throughout Europe, often appearing as both soloist and conductor. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello that once belonged to Hugo Becker.
Estelle Revaz performs in numerous countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. She has been invited to festivals such as the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Verbier Festival, the Sion Festival, the Colmar International Festival, and the Pablo Casals Festival, collaborating with musical partners including Gautier Capuçon, Renaud Capuçon, Alexandra Conunova, Raphaëlle Moreau, Tai Murray, Lena Neudauer, Sergey Ostrovsky, Tedi Papavrami, Pierre Génisson, Ralph Manno, Dana Ciocarlie, Finghin Collins, Anais Crestin, Christian Chamorel, Gaspard Dehaene, Shani Diluka, François Dumont, François-Frédéric Guy, François Killian, Cédric Pescia, and the Quatuor Sine Nomine, to name but a few. She also regularly performs in prestigious venues such as the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the NCPA in Beijing, the Oriental Art Center in Shanghai, the CCK in Buenos Aires, and the Auditorio del Sodre in Montevideo.
Her orchestral repertoire ranges from concertos by C.P.E. Bach to those by Gulda or Ligeti. Starting from the 2017-2018 season and for a period of 3 years, Estelle Revaz was the Artist-in-Residence with the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève under the direction of Arie van Beek. Among other projects, she recorded the album JOURNEY TO GENEVA, dedicated to Frank Martin’s concertos and a new work by Xavier Dayer. Released in 2021, this album received high praise from the press and was notably awarded 5 Diapasons and 5 Etoiles Classica.
Critics enthusiastically welcomed her first CD, titled CANTIQUE (NEOS 2015), on which she performs as the soloist for concertos by Ernest Bloch (Schelomo) and Andreas Pflüger (Pitture-Création). Le Temps highlighted it as “a profound, incisive, and demanding album where the orchestra and soloist perform with finesse and intelligence.” Her solo cello album BACH&FRIENDS (Solo Musica/Sony 2017) was also fervently received by the specialized press. Pizzicato wrote: “the sound is of perfect purity, the phrasing is extremely clear, and the dynamics are exceptionally refined,” while Musik und Theater spoke of “one of the best cello concepts of the moment.” Her duo album with pianist François Killian, titled FUGATO (Solo Musica/Sony 2019), featuring sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms, and Strauss, was also very warmly acclaimed by journalists. More recently, her fifth opus, INSPIRATION POPULAIRE (Solo Musica/Sony 2022), a duo with pianist Anaïs Crestin, was described by the media as radiant, sensitive, moving, inventive, and contrasted.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Estelle Revaz tirelessly mobilized to demonstrate the essential role of culture and to relay the concerns of cultural stakeholders to the political sphere. Her advocacy continues, as she was elected to the Swiss National Council in 2023. She has already successfully brought two projects to fruition, one concerning social protection for cultural professionals and the other addressing the fight against poverty.
Estelle Revaz has been featured on Radio France, RTBF, Deutschlandfunk, WDR3, SWR, and Swiss Radio and Television. She has also been a guest multiple times on RTS’s evening news program and was featured in a report alongside Gautier Capuçon. More recently, she co-produced a 5-episode radio series titled ‘Estelle and the Cello,’ broadcast on Espace 2/RTS.
After her debut in Switzerland, she trained in France at the CRR de Boulogne-Billancourt (Xavier Gagnepain) and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris (Jérôme Pernoo), as well as in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (Maria Kliegel). She thus obtained, with the highest honors, a Soloist Master’s degree, a Master’s degree in Contemporary Music Performance, and a Master’s degree in Instrumental Pedagogy.
Estelle Revaz is a laureate of several foundations and institutions that support her career through both scholarships and concert organization. These include the City of Geneva, the Canton of Valais, the Fonds Français Instrumental, and the Leenaards, Little Dreams, Dénéréaz, Kremer, Thiébaud-Frey, and Patiño foundations. In 2014, she was selected for the Verbier Festival Academy and received the ‘Rotary Prize’ in that context.
Since 2015, Estelle Revaz has been a member of the ‘Forum des 100,’ which brings together personalities shaping Switzerland’s future.
Since 2017, Estelle Revaz has been accredited as a professor of cello and chamber music at the Kalaidos University of Music in Zurich (CH). She also regularly and enthusiastically gives masterclasses/workshops in Europe, Asia, and South America. She recently conducted research on “the development of artistic identity in higher instrumental education,” which was published in March 2019 by l’Harmattan (musical education sciences collection).
Estelle Revaz currently plays a G. Grancino cello (1679) and a J. Eury bow (1825), provided to her by generous Swiss patrons.
Arthur Trælnes was born in Lausanne in 2002. He began learning the violin at the age of 6, and at 16, he joined the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne (HEMU) in Gyula Stuller’s class, where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in 2022. He then joined Alexander Kerr’s class (former concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam) at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University (Bloomington, USA), where he obtained a Solo Performance Diploma in 2023, before pursuing Master’s studies there.
Arthur has won numerous awards in national and international competitions as a soloist, including 3rd Prize and the Audience Award at the Tibor Varga Junior Competition in 2018, followed by an invitation from Gidon Kremer to perform as a soloist with his orchestra in Latvia. He also won 1st Prize at the Final of the International Competition for Violin and Orchestra “Premio Rotary per la musica” in Novi Ligure, Italy (2019), 4th Prize at the Tibor Varga Competition (2021), the contemporary music prize at the Spohr Competition in Weimar in 2022, as well as 3rd Prize at the Final of the Franco Gulli Competition in Rome in 2024.
Arthur has performed as a soloist on several occasions in Switzerland, Germany, Georgia, Italy, Latvia, and the United States, and held the position of concertmaster of the Verbier Festival Orchestra from 2022 to 2024, collaborating closely with renowned conductors such as Simon Rattle, Gianandrea Noseda, Klaus Mäkelä, and Lahav Shani. He has also been a member of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra since 2023.
He is regularly invited to perform at Masterclasses, notably at the Kronberg Academy Festival in 2021 (Kolja Blacher) and at the Thüringer Landes Musikakademie Sondershausen (Friedemann Eichhorn) in 2022, where he performs Tchaikovsky’s Concerto with orchestra. In November 2024, he will perform Mozart’s 5th Concerto with orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York during a Masterclass with Maxim Vengerov.
Arthur plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Ceruti dating from 1797 (Cremona, Italy). At the 2023 edition of the Verbier Festival, he had the opportunity to perform on a Stradivarius (“Hrimali”, 1712).
He regularly performs as a jazz violinist, notably with his quintet “Crome,” which has already released two albums (Komorebi, 2020 and Oneiroi, 2023).
Zofia Neugebauer was born in Wodzislaw Slaski, Poland, in 1994, and began playing the piano at the age of five. However, her fascination with the subtle possibilities of the flute led her to take up the instrument at the age of ten, and her continued passion for its rich and delicate sound blossomed into a rich and creative career. Her career as a solo flutist began when she performed with the Katowice Symphony Orchestra at the age of 13, subsequently leading her to perform, compete, and study in numerous prestigious musical centres across Europe.
To further her musical knowledge, Zofia completed her secondary education in Wroclaw, at the “Karol Szymanowski” Specialist Music School under the tutelage of Cezary Traczewski. During this period, she had the opportunity to meet and learn from several inspiring artists and teachers, including Professor Felix Renggli. Following a masterclass with him, Zofia decided to audition for his class at the Hochschule für Musik Basel. Over the following years, she worked closely with Professor Renggli on her musical development, while also discovering new opportunities to perform with small ensembles and orchestras at festivals in Germany and Switzerland.
Zofia completed her Bachelor’s degree (achieving the highest grade and a distinction) in Basel in 2016, and immediately began a Master’s in Performance at the same institution. However, her postgraduate studies were interrupted when she was selected as a member of the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017. Over the next two years, she continued to learn and develop within this prestigious institution, under the guidance of Mathieu Dufour. Since then, she has had the opportunity to perform at Europe’s most renowned music festivals, such as the Verbier Festival, the Gezeiten Konzerte, the Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Krzyżowa Music, and the Bad Kissinger Sommer.
Zofia was appointed principal flutist at the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, where she played from 2019 to 2021, relishing the opportunity to perform major works from the orchestral repertoire in a demanding and artistically excellent atmosphere. She now holds a temporary position with the Sinfonieorchester Basel. She also regularly appears as a soloist with orchestras such as the Gürzenich Orchester Köln, Camerata Zurich, and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, having worked with conductors including Simon Rattle, Iván Fischer, Zubin Mehta, and Paavo Järvi.
She has also successfully participated in numerous competitions across Europe, and received a scholarship from the Mozart Gesellschaft Dortmund in 2018, as well as from Villa Musica in 2022. She was also a scholarship recipient of the Polish Ministry of Culture.
Through all these achievements and performances, Zofia remains committed to her artistic and personal development. She constantly seeks new avenues of expression. She composes her own works and artistic creations, which helps her deepen her understanding of emotions and classical music.
Amanda Håøy Horn is a Norwegian violinist based in Oslo. Chamber music has played a significant role in her musical life, and she has been invited to several Norwegian festivals. After completing her studies with Elise Båtnes at the Norwegian Academy of Music, she furthered her expertise as an academy member with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, where she performed under the direction of Valery Gergiev. This led her to pursue her career with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norwegian Opera and Ballet, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and Ensemble Allegria, as well as touring with the Salzburg Festival, the BBC Proms, and the Lucerne Festival. She plays a violin made by Gaetano Pollastri and bows by Sartory and Rolland.
Fleuranne Brockway has captivated audiences in her native Australia, as well as throughout Europe. In 2022, Brockway won first prize and Best Female Voice at the 8th Concorso Lirico Internazionale di Portofino, and first prize at the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Competition. She was also a laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2023. Since moving to Europe, Ms. Brockway has maintained an impressive schedule of performances in roles such as Charlotte (
Jack Pepper is one of the youngest national radio presenters in the United Kingdom. At 19, he participated in the creation of Scala Radio, the UK’s newest national classical radio station, and became its presenter. Jack joins a team that includes some of the UK’s most beloved presenters, including Simon Mayo, Angellica Bell, and Mark Kermode. For five years, his weekly Saturday show, Jack Pepper’s Culture Bunker, explored the behind-the-scenes world of music. His guests included some of the biggest stars in the arts world. Jack is also a successful composer.
Yannis Rammos is an associate researcher in music theory at the Digital & Cognitive Musicology Lab at EPFL, and a member of the piano faculty at the European University Cyprus. A Russian-trained international pedagogue, he has taught in 2022/23 at the Verbier Festival Academy, the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität für Musik, the Estonian Academy for Music & Theater, and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, among others. His research is driven by the technical, interpretive, and philosophical aspects of classical musical art, focusing on the rift between structure and expression, the anxieties of “authenticity” and “originality,” the themes of piano timbre semantics, the use and disuse of musical analysis metaphors in (historical) performance treatises, and Russian musicological discourses. In most cases, he approaches traditions of linearity, including but not limited to those of Schenker, from various structuralist and post-structuralist perspectives. Formerly based at the Sibelius Academy, he completed his doctoral studies in piano and music theory at the CUNY Graduate Center and New York University, where he earned a doctorate in classical performance. He has recently published articles in Music & Letters, Quodlibet, and Music Theory & Analysis. He is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in piano. At EPFL, he is currently working on a formal model of the hidden repetition (“middleground”) of motifs, one of the most elusive, yet also most striking, features of the tonal canon.
Cellist Aleksey Shadrin, a participant in the Kronberg Academy’s Master Program, was born into a family of musicians in Ukraine. He won first prize at the 4th M. Lysenko International Music Competition in 2012. In 2018, he was awarded third prize at the Prague Spring Competition.
Following his initial successes in numerous competitions, including the Ukrainian National String Competition in Lviv/Lemberg and the 8th Ukrainian National ‘New Names’ Competition in Kyiv, he became a scholarship recipient in 2004 from the International Foundation of violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov.
In 2005, Aleksey Shadrin was a finalist at the 3rd David Popper International Cello Competition in Hungary, and in 2008, he won second prize at the Minsk International Competition. Following these successes, he performed in major concert halls across Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France, South Korea, China, Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
Aleksey Shadrin has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, the Opéra National de Montpellier, and the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz.
In 2016, he made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2017, he performed as a soloist with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, under the baton of Andrew Manze, in the Grosser Sendesaal in Hanover, and made his debut at the Hamburg Chamber Music Festival.
Aleksey Shadrin earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in musical arts at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover with Professor Leonid Gorokhov.
He is currently studying with Frans Helmerson at the Kronberg Academy.
Since September 2020, he has been an Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, where he studies with Gary Hoffman.