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Charlotte Gardner is a music critic and journalist regularly to be found in specialist music publications including The Strad, Gramophone (where she specialises in strings and Baroque) and Classical Music magazine, and writing concert programme notes for organisations including the BBC and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Before turning to writing, Charlotte spent eight years at the BBC working across live and pre-recorded radio and television, beginning on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune and spending her final few years in News, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. She holds a Music MA from the University of Cambridge.
French violinist Renaud Capuçon is firmly established internationally as a major soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. He is known and loved for his poise, depth of tone and virtuosity, and he works with the world’s most prestigious orchestras, artists, venues and festivals.
Born in Chambéry in 1976, Renaud Capuçon began his studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris at the age of fourteen, winning numerous awards during his five years there. Following this, Capuçon moved to Berlin to study with Thomas Brandis and Isaac Stern and was awarded the Prize of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 1997, he was invited by Claudio Abbado to become concert master of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, which he led for three summers, working with conductors including Boulez, Ozawa, Welser-Möst and Claudio Abbado.
Since then, Capuçon has established himself as a soloist at the very highest level. He performs with leading orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Vienna Philharmonic (VPO), London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Filarmonica della Scala, Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic. His many conductor relationships include Gergiev, Barenboim, Bychkov, Dénève, Dohnanyi, Dudamel, Eschenbach, Haitink, Harding, Paavo Järvi, Nelsons, Nézet-Seguin, Roth, Shani, Ticciati, van Zweden and Long Yu.
A great commitment to chamber music has led him to collaborations with Argerich, Angelich, Barenboim, Bashmet, Bronfman, Buniatishvili, Grimaud, Hagen, Ma, Pires, Trifonov and Yuja Wang, as well as with his brother, cellist Gautier Capuçon, and have taken him, among others, to the Berlin, Lucerne, Verbier, Aix-en-Provence, Roque d’Anthéron, San Sebastián, Stresa, Salzburg, Edinburgh International and Tanglewood festivals. Capuçon has also represented France at some of the world’s most prestigious international events: he has performed with Yo-Yo Ma under the Arc de Triomphe for the official commemoration of Armistice Day in the presence of more than 80 heads of state, and played for world leaders at the G7 Summit in Biarritz.
Capuçon is the Artistic Director of two festivals, the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, since 2016, and the Easter Festival in Aix-en-Provence, which he founded in 2013. From the 2021/22 season, Capuçon is also the Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne; his first set of recordings with the ensemble entitled ‘Tabula Rasa’, released in September 2021, is an album devoted to the music of Arvo Pärt.
Capuçon has built an extensive discography and records exclusively with Erato/Warner Classics. Recent releases include a recording of Bartok’s two violin concerti with the LSO / Roth, Brahms and Berg with the VPO / Harding, and chamber music of Debussy. His latest recording, ‘Au Cinema’, featuring much loved selections from film music, releases in October 2018. His latest album ‘Un violin à Paris’, recorded with Guillaume Bellom and released in November 2021, features a large range of shorter works arranged for violin and piano.
In 2017, Capuçon founded a new ensemble, the Lausanne Soloists, comprised of current and former students of the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne, where he has held a professorship since 2014. He plays the Guarneri del Gesù ‘Panette’ (1737), which belonged to Isaac Stern. In June 2011 he was appointed ‘Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite’ and in March 2016 ‘Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur’ by the French Government.
Ivry Gitlis is one of the most popular violinists of his time. He has succeeded in combing the integrity of a demanding musical career with original and renewed artistic experiences.
Originally from Ukraine, Ivry Gitlis’ parents settled in Israel in 1921. Ivry Gitlis was born a year later in Haifa. His parents were not musicians yet encouraged musical development in their son by offering him his first violin. His progress was prodigious. He studied with Ms. Velikovsky, (a pupil of Adolf Busch) and gave his first concert at the age of seven. Concerned about completing his musical education, Ivry Gitlis settled in France and was admitted to the Conservatoire in Jules Boucherit’s class. With his diploma under his belt, he decided to perfect his tuition with Georges Enesco, Carl Flesch and Jacques Thibaud.
Once the armistice was signed, Ivry Gitlis gave his debut with the London Phiharmonic Orchestra. While Glenn Gould inaugurated the return of artistic relations between Canada and the USSR in the middle of the 1950s, Ivry Gitlis was, in 1963, the first Israeli violinist to play in a country who often forced its own artists into exile. Ivry Gitlis gave his first tours of the United States with Eugene Ormandy and Georges Szell and recorded the great concertos of his century, (from Berg to Bartok via Sibelius).
Ivry Gitlis then chose to settle in Paris, a city in which his notoriety grew considerably. However, this fame did not in any way distance him from what was most essential. On the contrary, he was impassioned by the music of his era and interpreted pieces written for him like the Pezze per Ivry by Bruno Maderna while promoting the music of Xenakis. Ivry Gitlis is one of a handful of people who bear witness to the exchange made possible through music through his encounters with audiences from all horizons in every continent. He is familiar with numerous musical styles and travels with ease from one to the other founding festivals and encountering all different types of audiences. For this ingenious violinist who also paints and writes, music is not music without communication and immediate sharing.
The first mandolin soloist to be nominated for a classical Grammy, Avi Avital has been compared to Andres Segovia for his championship of his instrument and to Jascha Heifitz for his incredible virtuosity. Passionate and “explosively charismatic” (New York Times) in live performance, he is a driving force behind the reinvigoration of the mandolin repertory.
He has commissioned over 100 works for the mandolin including concertos for mandolin and orchestra by Anna Clyne, Jennifer Higdon, Avner Dorman, David Bruce and Giovanni Sollima which he has performed with orchestras and conductors such as the Munich Philharmonic with Krzysztof Urbański, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI and Ryan Bancroft and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Daniele Rustioni.
Highlights of the 2022/23 season see performances of the Mandolin Concertos by Jennifer Higdon, Anna Clyne and Giovanni Sollima commissioned for Avital, alongside tours with the Academy of Sat Martin in the Fields, Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini, B’Rock and Arcangelo, duo recitals with Ksenija Sidorova (accordion), Olga Pashchenko (harpsichord/fortepiano) and Omer Klein (piano), and a tour of Australia with cellist Giovanni Sollima. Avital launches his new venture, the “Between Worlds Ensemble” with a three-part residency at the Boulez Saal in Berlin. The ensemble was formed to explore different genres, cultures and musical worlds focusing on different geographical regions and in its first year will feature traditional, classical and folk music from the Iberian Peninsula, Black Sea and Italy.
Avi Avital collaborates with musicians across many genres including Mahan Esfahani, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Alice Sara Ott, Andreas Scholl, the Dover Quartet, the Danish String Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Omer Klein, Omer Avital, actress Martina Gedeck and Georgian puppet theatre Budrugana Gagra. His versatility has led to features as “Portrait Artist” at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, BOZAR in Brussels and the Dortmund Konzerthaus (Zeitinsel). He is a regular presence at major festivals such as Aspen, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Spoleto, Ravenna, MISA Shanghai, Cheltenham, Verbier and Tsinandali.
An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, his sixth album for the label “The Art of the Mandolin” has been received with high praise and top reviews in The Times, Independent, Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine as well as the international press. Previous recordings “Bach” (2019), “Avital meets Avital” (2017), “Vivaldi” (2015), an album of Avital’s own transcriptions of Bach concertos (2012) and “Between Worlds” (2014) also received numerous awards.
Born in Be’er Sheva in southern Israel, Avital began learning the mandolin at the age of eight and soon joined the flourishing mandolin youth orchestra founded and directed by his charismatic teacher, Russian-born violinist Simcha Nathanson. He studied at the Jerusalem Music Academy and the Conservatorio Cesare Pollini in Padua with Ugo Orlandi. Winner of Israel’s prestigious Aviv Competitions in 2007, Avital is the first mandolinist in the history of the competition to be so honoured. He plays on a mandolin made by Israeli luthier Arik Kerman.
Sophie Ellen Frank is the creator of the educational concept and artistic director of the Opera Academy. Born in 1963 in Osaka, Japan, Sophie Ellen Frank made her debut at the age of four in the role of the child in Madame Butterfly at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in the arms of Dame Gwyneth Jones. She went on to sing as a member and soloist of the children’s choir in Turandot, Carmen, Wozzeck, Les Troyens and Der Wildschütz in Geneva and Darmstadt. From backstage, she observed her mother, Nicole Buloze, then a world-renowned dancer, choreographer and singer. Sophie studied violin and cello, classical dance and theatre at the conservatories in Darmstadt and Basel.
After her commercial and aviation safety training in Geneva, she continued her singing studies at the Conservatoire and the Ecole d’Opéra from 1987 to 1992. She worked with Gabriel Bacquier, José van Dam, Régine Crespin, Gloria Davy, Nancy Long, Kammersängerin Christa Ludwig, Sena Jurinac, Gert Krämer. Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro was her first major role, and she has since performed, among others, Cherubino, Dorabella, Donna Elvira, Rosalinde, Sesto, Rosina, Haensel and Orlovsky in Geneva, Frankfurt, Lyon and Zurich.
She has produced and directed numerous events in Geneva such as the Italian Opera Week, the Russian Music Week, and Rossini’s Inganno Felice with Sonja Yoncheva.
Paul Hess is the President of the Académie de l’opera Association (Geneva), its conductor and musical director. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Academia Chigiana in Siena, Italy. He is a laureate of the Besançon International Conducting Competition and a recipient of a Fullbright Scholarship in Italy. He studied conducting with the Masters: Michael Tilson Thomas, Sir Charles Mackerras, Rafael Kubelik, Stanley Pope, Franco Ferrara, Boris Goldovsky, and conducted concerts and operas in Boston, Salzburg, Buffalo, Rome, Siena, Bologna, Treviso, San Remo, Trapani, Besançon, Geneva, Basel and Bern, and prestigious orchestras such as the OSR, OCG, OCL, BBC. He is also a regular member of the jury for international opera competitions.
Paul Hess is also a cartoonist and humorous portraitist. His drawings have been published in various specialised music magazines, including Il Mondo de la Musica (Rome) and Clavier (United States). He has been exhibited at the Rome Opera (100 drawings), at Victoria Hall in Geneva, at the B. F. M. in Geneva, at the Radio Suisse Romande in Lausanne, at the Télévision Suisse Romande in Geneva and at the G.A.T.T. in Geneva.
His career as a musical director; symphonic orchestras, ballets, operas, operettas, musicals, choirs, and his talent as a draughtsman and his pedagogical abilities, lead him today quite naturally towards teaching and passing on knowledge and expertise to new generations.
Roby Lakatos is not only a virtuoso on the violin, but also an extremely versatile musician who is equally adept to performing classical music, jazz and the folk idiom of his home country of Hungary. He is hard to define: most often, he is described as a Gypsy violinist, a devil’s fiddler, classical master, jazz improviser, composer and arranger – and his unique artistic personality is all that. He is a universal musician combining brilliant technique that makes him one of the best violinists in the world with creativity in improvisation and composing power.
Roby Lakatos was born in 1965 to a legendary family of Romani musicians as a member of the seventh generation of direct descendants to János Bihari – the famous “King of Gipsy Violinists”, who was admired by Ludwig van Beethoven, introduced Johannes Brahms to the themes for his Hungarian Dances and of whom Franz Liszt said: “The sweet tones drawn from his magic violin fell like drops of nectar on our enchanted ears.” From early childhood, Roby Lakatos lived with the musical tradition of his family – he played in his uncle Sándor and father Antal’s band and appeared as the first violinist of a Gipsy orchestra at the age of nine.
Thus, he learned the tradition of violin technique and ornamentation at an early age, but also gained formal education at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest.
After winning the first prize for violin at the age of 19, he left for Belgium and first played in Liège, and then in the newly opened club Les Ateliers de la Grande Ile in Brussels, which quickly became a hotspot thanks to him and his ensemble. In the ten years of performing in the club, the ensemble attracted numerous fans: the shows were regularly visited by Sir Yehudi Menuhin, for example, and Roby made connections and collaborated with a number of musicians, including violinist Vadim Repin and his role model for violin jazz music performances Stéphane Grappelli.
His concert career developed gradually, and now Roby Lakatos spends most of his time performing in various stages around the world. His ensemble has appeared, among other places, at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, in Académies Musicales de Saintes, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Ludwigsburg Schloßfestspiele and the Helsinki Festival, as well as in prestigious concert halls (Santa Cecilia in Rome, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Zankel Hall – Carnegie Hall in New York). His versatility has given him and his ensemble the opportunity to collaborate with major orchestras–The London Symphony Orchestra, French National Radio Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, to name a few – as well as with numerous exceptional artists, including Giora Feidman, Herbie Hancock, Joshua Bell, Maksim Vengerov, Nigel Kennedy and Randy Brecker. In Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan he first performed in 1999, and has since been regularly playing in Asia. He records for Hungarian and Belgian television networks and has also appeared on German television and German national radio stations, as well as on BBC in London.
Roby plays a violin made by Fabien Gram.
Seven years after the release of their 1991 album Gypsy Style for MW Records, The Roby Lakatos Ensemble recorded their first CD for Deutsche Grammophon, titled Lakatos. With a presentation of a unique style, which is a fusion of typical Gipsy music elements and jazz with improvisation as an important feature and specific technical effects, some of which he created himself (such as the fascinating left-hand pizzicato), Roby Lakatos and his ensemble also reflected a universal approach to the musical material by including on their CD the works by composers ranging from Zoltán Kodály and Johannes Brahms to John Williams’s music for Schindler’s List and Charles Aznavour’s chanson La Bohème. This album, which received the prestigious German Echo Klassik award, was followed by four more releases for Deutsche Grammophon: Lakatos Gold and Post Phrasing (1998/1999), Live From Budapest (1999), and As Time Goes By (2002) offering an equally exciting combination of
jazz and Gipsy music idioms with contemporary and classical elements. Apart from recording for other labels – With Musical Friends (Universal, 2001), Kinoshita Meets Lakatos (Prime Direction, Inc., 2002), Prokofiev… (Avanticlassic, 2005), Fire Dance (Avantijazz, 2005) and Klezmer Karma (Avanticlassic, 2006) – Roby Lakatos also started his own label Lakatos Recording Company to present somewhat different music, i.e. experimental works such as the project named The Legend of the Toad (2004), which is a sort of musical story told through his performances and the performances of his ensemble whose member, pianist Kálmán Cséki, also arranged the music.
Except for his long-time associate, violinist Lászlo Bóni, Roby Lakatos’s ensemble today is composed of young virtuoso musicians with classical musical education who are also well versed in the folklore tradition of Hungarian Gypsies.
Born in Siberia in 1971, Vadim Repin was eleven when he won the gold medal in all age categories in the Wienawski Competition and gave his recital debuts in Moscow and St Petersburg. At 14 he made his debuts in Tokyo, Munich, Berlin, Helsinki; a year later in Carnegie Hall. At 17 he was the youngest ever winner of the Reine Elisabeth Concours.
Since then he has performed with all the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors. Among the highlights of his career in the past few seasons have been tours with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, the NHK Orchestra and Dutoit; a tour of Australia with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski, and acclaimed premières in London, Philadelphia, New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Salle Pleyel in Paris and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw of the violin concerto written for him by James MacMillan, culminating in a BBC Prom at the sold out Royal Albert Hall.
Vadim Repin recorded the great Russian violin concerti by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky on Warner Classics. For Deutsche Grammophon he recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto, the Brahms Violin Concerto and Double Concerto (Truls Mørk, cello) with the Gewandhaus Orchester, the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov trios with Mischa Maisky and Lang Lang (which won the Echo Classic) and works by Grieg, Janacek and César Franck with Nikolai Lugansky, which won the 2011 BBC Music Award.
In 2010 he received the Victoire d’Honneur, France’s most prestigious musical award for a lifetime’s dedication to music, and became Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres. Following master classes and concerts in Beijing in December 2014 he was awarded an honorary professorship of the Central Conservatory of Music, and in 2015 an honorary professorship of the Shanghai Conservatory.
Highlights of the last season included concerts in Hong Kong and Beijing, a European tour with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Neeme Jarvi, and concerts in Vienna with Kent Nagano and Lionel Bringuier. In April 2014 Vadim Repin as Artistic Director presented the first Trans-Siberian Festival of the Arts in Novosibirsk’s magnificent new concert hall, featuring a new commission, ‘Voices of Violin’ by Benjamin Yussupov, and a joint appearance by Vadim Repin and prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova. The Festival was enthusiastically received and was repeated and extended in the spring of 2015, this time featuring a specially commissioned violin concerto, ‘De Profundis’, by Lera Auerbach.
Last season began with concerts in Vilnius, Prague, Vienna, Paris and Ankara and a Vadim Repin Festival in Tokyo in November with chamber music and orchestral concerts. Performances in the United States were followed by concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy in London and Cardiff, the German première of the Yussupov concerto in the Berlin Philharmonie, and a return to Japan for concerts with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the Tchaikovsky centenary. This season began with concerts in Yerevan, Barcelona and Madrid and a tour of European capitals with the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, and will culminate with a ‘Transsiberia goes to Tel Aviv’ project.
Vadim Repin plays on the 1733 ‘Rode’ violin by Stradivari.
Composing music that both embraces and challenges western classical traditions, Gabriel Prokofiev has emerged as a significant voice in new approaches to classical music at the beginning of the 21st century. After completing his musical studies at Birmingham and York Universities, and dissatisfied with the seemingly insular world of contemporary classical music, he developed a parallel music career as a dance, grime, electro and hip-hop producer. This background in dance music combined with his classical roots gives his music a unique and truly contemporary sound.
Gabriel has built up a large body of orchestral and chamber works and has composed seven concertos (three featuring turntables), as well as many electronic works, often combining synthesisers and samples with classical instrumentation. His works have been performed internationally by orchestras including Seattle Symphony, Detroit Symphony, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Moscow State Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, MDR Leipzig, Copenhagen Phil, Luxembourg Philharmonique, Buenos Aires Filharmonica, Porto Symphony and Real Orquesta de Sevilla. Also, he frequently collaborates with contemporary dancers and has worked with companies including Stuttgarter Ballet, Rambert Dance, Bern Ballet, Shobana Jeyasingh, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Alexander Whitley Dance and Gandini Juggling. In 2019, his first full-length opera Elizabetta was premiered by Regensburg Opera in Bavaria.
Gabriel is also an events curator, producer and founder of the Nonclassical record label and club night, home to a host of artists who defy conventions. Through Nonclassical, he has been one of the leading proponents of presenting classical music in non-traditional venues; and he regularly performs in East London nightclubs, warehouses and electronic music festivals, often DJing and doing live remixes of the works just performed.
Gabriel studied electroacoustic composition under Jonty Harrison in Birmingham, and a Masters in composition with Ambrose Field & Roger Marsh. He is published by both Faber Music and Mute Song, and resides in Hackney, London, with his wife and their three young children.
Violinist Pierre Colombet is a founding member of Quatuor Ébène. The quartet began its rise to fame in 2004 as winner of the ARD Music Competition, following studies with the Quatuor Ysaÿe in Paris, and also Gábor Takács, Eberhard Feltz and György Kurtág. Today it is internationally fêted for its distinctive, charismatic playing, and the complexity of its oeuvre, including its trademark jazz and pop improvisations. Beyond numerous awards for its recordings, including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and the Midem Classic Award, the quartet became in 2019 the first ever ensemble to be honoured with the Frankfurt Music Prize. Quatuor Ébène is an alumnus of the Verbier Festival Academy.