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Truls Mørk’s compelling performances, combining fierce intensity, integrity and grace, have established him as one of the pre-eminent cellists of our time.
A celebrated artist, Truls Mørk performs with the most distinguished orchestras including the Orchestre de Paris, Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Concertgebouworkest, Münchner Philharmoniker, Philharmonia and London Philharmonic orchestras and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. In North America he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras, Boston Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Conductor collaborations include Mariss Jansons, David Zinman, Manfred Honeck, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Christoph Eschenbach, amongst others.
A great champion of contemporary music, Truls Mørk has given in excess of 30 premieres. In 2019/20 season he premiered Victoria Borisova-Ollas’ cello concerto Oh Giselle, Remember Me, commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony, with whom he was Artist in Residence, Bergen Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras. He has also given highly successful performances of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s cello concerto, conducted by the composer at the Royal Festival Hall, Lincoln Center and the Festival d’Aix en Provence. In collaboration with Klaus Mäkelä, he performed the Salonen cello concerto with the Philharmonique de Radio France and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Other commissions include Rautavaara’s Towards the Horizon with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds, Pavel Haas’ Cello Concerto with Wiener Philharmoniker and Jonathan Nott, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Concerto for Three Cellos with the NHK Symphony Orchestra and Charles Dutoit, Hafliði Hallgrímsson’s Cello Concerto, co-commissioned by the Oslo Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony and Scottish Chamber orchestras.
Hope works regularly with conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Iván Fischer and Christian Thielemann, as well as with renowned symphony orchestras around the world and composers such as Alfred Schnittke, György Kurtág, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Tōru Takemitsu and Tan Dun. His discography includes more than 30 albums, which have received awards including the German Record Critics’ Prize, the Diapason d’Or of the Year, the Edison Classical Award and the Prix Caecilia.
Hope studied violin with Zakhar Bron, Itzhak Rashkovsky and Felix Andrievsky and he completed his training at the London Royal Academy of Music. He worked closely with his mentor Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he gave numerous concerts worldwide. He lives with his family in Berlin and plays the “Ex-Lipiński” Guarneri del Gesù from 1742, which is generously made available to him.
Vilde Frang was unanimously awarded the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award in 2012 and made her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink at the Lucerne Festival.
Highlights among her recent and forthcoming solo engagements include performances with Berlin Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, London Symphony, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony and the NHK Symphony in Tokyo, with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Manfred Honeck, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons, Herbert Blomstedt, Daniel Harding, Vladimir Jurowski, David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, Esa Pekka Salonen, Yuri Temirkanov and Sir Simon Rattle.
She regularly appears at festivals in Salzburg, Verbier, Lucerne, London Proms, Rheingau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lockenhaus, Mostly Mozart Festival, Prague Spring Music Festival and George Enescu Festival Bucharest. As soloist and in recital, Vilde has performed at venues such as the Concertgebouw, Musikverein, Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Tonhalle Zurich, Bozar Brussels, Rudolfinum, Tchaikovsky Hall, in Vancouver Recital Series, Boston Celebrity Series, San Francisco Performances, and at Carnegie Hall.
Vilde Frang is an exclusive Warner Classics artist and her recordings have received numerous awards, including the Grand Prix du Disque, Edison Klassiek Award, Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Diapason d’Or and Gramophone Award.
Born in Norway in 1986, Vilde was engaged by Mariss Jansons at the age of twelve to debut with Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.
She studied at Barratt Due Musikkinstitutt in Oslo, with Kolja Blacher at Musikhochschule Hamburg and Ana Chumachenco at the Kronberg Academy. She has also worked with Mitsuko Uchida as a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship winner 2007, and was a scholarship-holder 2003-2009 in the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.
Vilde Frang performs on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume from 1866.
Alexander Sitkovetsky was born in Moscow into a family with a well-established musical tradition. His concerto debut came at the age of eight, and in the same year he moved to the UK to study at the Menuhin School. Lord Menuhin was his inspiration throughout his school years and they performed together on several occasions.
The forthcoming season will see his returns to Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Chattanooga Symphony, Colorado Springs Philharmonic and Rogue Valley Symphony Medford in the United States. He will also visit New York again several times as part of the prestigious CMS at Lincoln Center. He will also return to the direct the Romanian Youth Orchestra, Detmold Chamber Orchestra and Leopoldinum Orchestra Wroclaw and appear at numerous festivals across Europe, such as Stavanger, Music for Galway and Verbier Festival at Schloss Elmau.
Amongst the highlights of previous seasons are his debuts at Vienna’s Musikverein with the Tonkünstler Orchester, tour with the North Netherlands Orchestra as well as return visits to the Manchester Camerata, Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta Riga, English Symphony Orchestra and Anima Musicae Orchesta Budapest. He also tours regularly with Julia Fischer as a permanent member of her string quartet.
Highlights of his recent concerto performances include appearances with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, European Union Chamber Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin’s in the Fields, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bolivia, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra, Residentie Orkest The Hague, Welsh National Opera Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra.
He is also much in demand as a director and has directed and performed as a soloist regularly with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Players, Camerata Zurich, Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and the Romanian Sinfonietta. He is also regularly invited as guest soloist with orchestras touring the UK and these have recently included the Russian Philharmonic Novosibirsk, Brussels Philharmonic, St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the Tonkünstler Orchester.
His critically acclaimed CPO recording of Andrzej Panufnik’s Violin Concerto with the Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin commemorating the composer’s 100th birthday won an ICMA Special Achievement Award. His most recent recording with the English Symphony Orchestra of Philip Sawyers’s Violin Concerto was released to great critical acclaim.
Alexander was awarded 1st prize at the Trio di Trieste Duo Competition alongside pianist Wu Qian. He is an alumnus of the prestigious Bowers Program (previously named Chamber Music Society Two) at the Lincoln Center, and in 2016 received the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.
Alexander is a founding member of the award-winning Sitkovetsky Trio with whom he has performed worldwide. The trio won the BBC Music Magazine award for Chamber Music in 2022.
Alexander plays the 1679 ‘Parera’ Antonio Stradivari violin, kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous sponsor.
Recipient of numerous prestigious vocal awards worldwide, Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená came to prominence in 1995 when she won the Sixth International Mozart Competition in Salzburg. She has since performed on the world’s most prestigious concert and opera stages, with leading conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, and Bernard Haitink and with orchestras including Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Philharmonic. Among her recital partners are pianists Mitsuko Uchida, Daniel Barenboim and Yefim Bronfman, with whom she recorded her 2021 Nostalgia album for Pentatone. Her extensive discography has given rise to multiple awards for Magdalena, including Gramophone Artist of the Year (2004), the Echo Klassik, Record Academy Prize Tokyo, and Diapason d’or. In 2003 she was appointed a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Boasting an unrivalled and multi award-winning discography, mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter’s versatility has seen her work with legendary artists ranging from the late greats of Carlos Kleiber, Claudio Abbado and Giuseppe Sinopoli to Elvis Costello, Brad Mehldau and Rufus Wainwright III.
An ever-evolving repertoire has played a key role in sustaining Swedish-born von Otter’s international profile, from an early position as the superlative Oktavian (Der Rosenkavalier) of her generation giving performances around the world, including at Bayerische Staatsoper, Opéra National de Paris and The Metropolitan Opera, to her more recent acclaimed creation of Leonora in the world premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel, performed at both Salzburger Festspiele and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Other recent highlights include Countess Geschwitz in Christoph Marthaler’s production of Lulu at Staatsoper Hamburg, Madame de Croissy (Dialogues des Carmélites) at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, The Old Lady (Candide) at Komische Oper Berlin in Barrie Kosky’s new production, Geneviève (Pelléas et Mélisande) for Opéra National de Paris, and Leocadia Begbick (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Following earlier success at the Salzburger Festspiele as Cornelia (Giulio Cesare), von Otter returned there in the 2019 edition as L’Opinion Publique in Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers; as Waltraute (Götterdämmerung), she has appeared under Sir Simon Rattle at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Wiener Staatsoper and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence; and at Finnish National Opera, she has most recently created the leading role of Charlotte Andergast in the world premiere of Sebastian Fagerlund’s Höstsonaten, based on the iconic Ingmar Bergman film, to unanimous critical acclaim.
Anne Sofie von Otter is one of today’s most recorded artists with an incomparable discography built across a career now spanning more than three decades at the very top of her profession. A lengthy and exclusive relationship with Deutsche Grammophon produced a wealth of acclaimed recordings as well as a collaboration with pop legend Elvis Costello on For the Stars. Her first recording with Naïve Classique, Love Songs, with renowned jazz pianist Brad Mehldau was released in 2010 and her double CD, Douce France, received a Grammy Award in 2015 for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Von Otter immortalized many of her operatic characters on disc: Oktavian with Bernard Haitink and the Staatskapelle Dresden and on DVD with Wiener Staatsoper under the late Carlos Kleiber, Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) under James Levine, Idomeneo, La clemenza di Tito, Alceste and Orfeo ed Euridice under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Handel’s Ariodante, Hercules and Giulio Cesare under Marc Minkowski, and Ariadne auf Naxos under the late Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Equally recognized for her exemplary work in both concert and recital, Anne Sofie von Otter’s career has taken her around the globe as a regular presence in the world’s most important venues and her expansive discography of Lieder ranges from classics by Schubert, Schumann, Wolf and Mahler, through lesser known compilations from Cecile Chaminade, Korngold, Peterson-Bergen and Stenhammar. Von Otter was part of two very special events which were streamed worldwide: Das Lied von der Erde with Jonas Kaufmann, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the late Claudio Abbado to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death; and in specially-commissioned new arrangements by Aulis Sallinen of Sibelius’ songs with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Von Otter’s 20/21 season includes returns to the operatic stages of Bayerische Staatsoper as Marcellina in Christof Loy’s highly-regarded production of Le nozze di Figaro conducted by Constantinos Carydis and Ivor Bolton – as well as a special Gala concert as part of their summer Opernfestspiele, also under Carydis – Royal Swedish Opera in a concert performance of Kaija Saariaho’s Passion de Simone with Christian Karlsen, and Malmö Opera for a series of Christmas concerts. Anne Sofie joins Orchestre National de France and Dalia Stasevska for New Year’s concerts in both Paris and Aix-en-Provence, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Martin Fröst for a world premiere by Mikael Karlsson, and Drottningholms Barockensemble in Handel’s Solomon. In recital, Anne Sofie continues to perform with long-time collaborator Bengt Forsberg and guitarist Fabian Fredriksson at the Ghent and Naantali Festivals, Musée d’Orsay, and Mogens Dahl. At the 2021 Menuhin Festival Gstaad, von Otter performs her acclaimed Shakespearian programme of words and music alongside Roderick Williams and Julius Drake, and brings her special project “Ich wollt ich wär ein Huhn” to Bamberg’s Lied und Lyrik Festival, featuring music from the Weimar Cabaret era and originally devised together with Barrie Kosky for its premiere at Komische Oper Berlin last season.
Etienne Eichenberger co-founded WISE-philanthropy advisors, the first company in Europe to provide philanthropy advisory services to entrepreneurs and their families, helping them define and implement charitable projects. Since 2006, he has served on the board of Swiss Philanthropy Foundation, and is currently its Chairman.
Lynda joined MAVA as Director General in August 2010. She is responsible for implementing the strategy of the foundation and leading the secretariat team. Since joining the foundation, Lynda has overseen a complete reshaping of MAVA including changes at the levels of the board, staff, strategy, processes, project selection, and communications. Lynda led the foundation to incorporate a new programme to work on the intersection of economic growth and natural resource depletion. Before joining the foundation, Lynda spent 13 years with WWF International in Switzerland. She brought with her the experience of managing and directing global strategies for all aspects of office operations in the WWF Network and developing performance tools for its offices. Prior to that, she spent five years in charge of WWF leadership and organisational development. Lynda began her career as a San Francisco stockbroker and then earned an MBA from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She is American and Swiss and has two grown sons. Lynda serves on the Board of the Global Footprint Network. She also acts as President of the Board of Partners for a New Economy and the Prespa Ohrid Nature Trust (PONT).
Karen Zorn, President of the Longy School of Music of Bard College (Boston) is a fearless educational entrepreneur. She has established partnerships with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and FundaMusical of Venezuela (El Sistema) to launch innovative programs of study and community engagement. These include the recently launched Take a Stand program and new Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) in Music education programme, based in Los Angeles, as well as teaching by Longy Conservatory students in public schools, community centers, prisons, nursing homes and other external venues where the traditions of music education can contribute to public life. Zorn is also a classically trained pianist.
Born in Athens, violinist Leonidas Kavakos had by the age of 21 already won the 1985 Sibelius Competition and the Paganini and Naumburg competitions in 1988. This led to him making the first ever recording of the original Sibelius Violin Concerto, which won the Gramophone Concerto of the Year Award in 1991. Today he is recognised across the world as an artist of rare quality, acclaimed for his matchless technique, captivating artistry and superb musicianship, and the integrity of his playing. He is the Carnegie Hall Perspectives Artist in 2021/22 and is an exclusive recording artist with Sony Classics, who released his eagerly awaited recording of the complete set of Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. He plays the ‘Willemotte’ Stradivarius violin of 1734.