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In June 2016 he debuted with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra as conductor and solo pianist. No less than two months later, his appointment as Chief Conductor was announced and he became the youngest conductor to hold the position in the orchestra’s history. The Rotterdam Philharmonic with Shani have an exclusive recording contract with Warner Classics.
Shani’s close relationship with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra began well over 10 years ago. He debuted with the orchestra aged sixteen, and in 2007 performed Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto under the baton of Zubin Mehta aged eighteen. He then went on to play regularly with the orchestra as a double bassist. In 2013, after winning the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, the orchestra invited him to step in to conduct their season-opening concerts. Since then, he has returned to the orchestra every year as both a conductor and pianist.
Recent and upcoming guest conductor highlights include engagements with Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhaus Orchester, Münchner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, London Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris and Philharmonia Orchestra. In March 2022 Lahav Shani conducted Munich’s Benefit concert in aid of Ukraine at the Isarphilharmonie with Anne-Sophie Mutter and the three orchestras of the city, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Philharmoniker. In the 2022/2023 season, he began his 3-year residency at the Konzerthaus Dortmund.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1989, Shani began his piano studies aged six with Hannah Shalgi, before continuing with Prof. Arie Vardi at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music. He went on to study conducting under Prof. Christian Ehwald and piano with Prof. Fabio Bidini at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler, Berlin and was mentored by Daniel Barenboim during his time there.
As a pianist, Shani has performed as a soloist with Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta and Gianandrea Noseda. He has play-directed piano concerti with many orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Staatskapelle Berlin and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Shani also has considerable experience performing chamber music and in recital and is a regular performer at the Verbier Festival, and has also appeared at the Aix-en-Provence Easter and Jerusalem Chamber Music Festivals, and in duo recitals with Martha Argerich.
Julien Quentin’s remarkable musical depth, clear and distinct sound, and flawless technique make him in great demand as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the world. Born in Paris, the French pianist began his studies at the Geneva Conservatory, followed by Indiana University and the Juilliard School. He created ‘Musica Litoralis’, a Berlin-based concert series in the spirit of the Roaring Twenties that has become increasingly successful. He regularly explores new art forms and other musical genres with numerous visual artists, with pianists Kelvin Sholar, Kaan Bulak and Francesco Tristano, and with producers Adrien de Maublanc and Cesar Merveille in projects ranging from improvisation to electronic music.
Recognised as one of the leading accompanists of his generation, he has worked with many of the world’s greatest singers including Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Janet Baker, Olaf Bär, Barbara Bonney, Ian Bostridge, Angela Gheorghiu, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, Della Jones, Simon Keenlyside, Angelika Kirchschlager, Magdalena Kozena, Solveig Kringelborn, Jonathan Lemalu, Dame Felicity Lott, Christopher Maltman, Karita Mattila, Lisa Milne, Ann Murray, Anna Netrebko, Anne Sofie von Otter, Joan Rodgers, Amanda Roocroft, Michael Schade, Frederica von Stade, Sarah Walker and Bryn Terfel.
He has presented his own series at the Wigmore Hall (a Britten and a Poulenc series and Decade by Decade – 100 years of German Song broadcast by the BBC) and at the Edinburgh Festival (the complete lieder of Hugo Wolf). He has appeared throughout Europe (including London’s Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Opera House; La Scala, Milan; the Chatelet, Paris; the Liceu, Barcelona; Berlin’s Philharmonie and Konzerthaus; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein), North America (including in New York both Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall), Australia (including the Sydney Opera House) and at the Aix en Provence, Vienna, Edinburgh, Schubertiade, Munich and Salzburg Festivals.
Recording projects have included Schubert, Schumann and English song recitals with Bryn Terfel (for Deutsche Grammophon); Schubert and Strauss recitals with Simon Keenlyside (for EMI); recital recordings with Angela Gheorghiu and Barbara Bonney (for Decca), Magdalena Kozena (for DG), Della Jones (for Chandos), Susan Bullock (for Crear Classics), Solveig Kringelborn (for NMA); Amanda Roocroft (for Onyx); the complete Fauré songs with Sarah Walker and Tom Krause; the complete Britten Folk Songs for Hyperion; the complete Beethoven Folk Songs for Deutsche Grammophon; the complete Poulenc songs for Signum; and Britten Song Cycles as well as Schubert’s Winterreise with Florian Boesch for Onyx.
This season’s engagements include appearances with Simon Keenlyside, Magdalena Kozena, Dorothea Röschmann, Susan Graham, Christopher Maltman, Thomas Oliemanns, Kate Royal, Christiane Karg, Iestyn Davies, Florian Boesch and Anne Schwanewilms.
He was a given an honorary doctorate at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2004, and appointed International Fellow of Accompaniment in 2009. Malcolm was the Artistic Director of the 2011 Leeds Lieder+ Festival.
Young Latvian pianist Daumants Liepins is one of the piano world’s most exciting new talents. In 2019 he took First Prize along with the Public and Orchestra prizes at the prestigious Maria Canals International Piano competition in Barcelona, and was awarded the Verbier Festival’s Vendôme Prize. He then topped Pianist magazine’s list of ‘Pianists to Look Out For in 2020’. Already firmly established as a core artist in his home country, he opened the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra’s 2020/21 season with Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto. Concerto appearances beyond his home shores meanwhile have included with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra and the Georgian National Symphony Orchestra. He currently studies at the Ingesund School of Music at Karlstad University, Sweden, with Professor Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist.
Richard Goode has been hailed for music-making of tremendous emotional power, depth and expressiveness, and is recognised worldwide as one of today’s leading interpreters of Classical and Romantic music. An exclusive Nonesuch artist, Goode is a regular performer in the major recital halls and festivals across Europe and the US and performs as soloist with some of the world’s finest orchestras. In a recent season, The Daily Telegraph said, “There are brilliant young things among pianists, and there are wise old birds, who show their wisdom naturally in everything they do, without grandstanding or elaborate highlighting of details. Richard Goode is one of the latter sort.”
In recital, Goode performs every season at London’s Wigmore Hall and in major music centres across Europe, which in recent seasons has included Paris, Lyon, Verbier, Amsterdam, Budapest, Madrid, Stockholm, amongst others, and he has been a regular performer over the years at the Edinburgh International Festival, Kissinger Sommer and Pianos aux Jacobins in Toulouse. In 2019/20, highlights include his debut with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jurowski and an appearance at the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad Festival, as well as a recital tour across Italy and a UK festivals tour, finishing with a return to the Oxford Piano Festival in the summer of 2020.
In the US, Goode performs in all the major cities and in 2019/20 appears in recital at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, in New York at Tisch Center for the Arts, in Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, and in Canada in Montreal and Toronto. Goode has performed as soloist with most of the major orchestras across the US and many across Europe; recent highlights included debuts with Oslo Philharmonic and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, and returns to the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, and Cleveland Orchestra.
Goode has made more than two dozen recordings over the years, ranging from solo and chamber works to lieder and concertos. His latest recording of the five Beethoven concertos with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer was released in 2009 to exceptional critical acclaim, described as “a landmark recording” by the Financial Times and nominated for a Grammy award.
Chilly Gonzales, Grammy-winning Canadian pianist and entertainer currently living in Europe, is known as much for the intimate piano touch of his best-selling Solo Piano album trilogy as for his showmanship and composition for award-winning stars.
“Gonzo” aims to be a man of his time, approaching the piano with classical and jazz training but with the attitude of a rapper. He performs and writes songs with Jarvis Cocker, Feist and Drake, among others and holds the Guinness world record for the longest solo concert at over 27 hours. In 2014 he won a Grammy for his collaboration on Daft Punk’s Best Album of the Year. 2018 saw the cinema release of a career retrospective documentary Shut Up and Play the Piano that premiered at the A-list Berlinale Film festival.
Most recently, Chilly Gonzales ventured into a new form of entrepreneurship. A culmination of recent years’ explorations in teaching, Gonzo inaugurated his very own music school: The Gonzervatory.
His first book Enya: A Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures was published in October 2020. In dazzling, erudite prose Gonzales delves beyond her innumerable gold discs and millions of fans to excavate his own enthusiasm for Enya’s singular music as well as the mysterious musician herself, and along the way uncovers new truths about the nature of music, fame, success and the artistic endeavor. In this musical memoir, he asks: Does music have to be smart or does it just need to go straight to the heart?
In Winter 2020, Chilly Gonzales released A very chilly christmas, his very own Christmas Album. From feudal oldies to newer holiday pop canon, A very chilly christmas surveys a broad scope of seasonal repertoire and sentiment. There’s grandeur and solemnity, there’s austerity and merriment, and there’s Mariah Carey.
For this tour, Chilly Gonzales is joined on stage for a portion of the show by Stella Le Page, Cello, Joe Flory, Drums & Marine Goldwaser, Clarinet.
With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, 24-year old pianist Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents which come along only rarely, equally at home in Mozart as the major romantic repertoire.
Born in Tokyo, Fujita was still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017 when he took First Prize at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, along with the Audience Award, Prix Modern Times, and the Prix Coup de Coeur, which first brought him to the attention of the international music community. He was also the Silver Medalist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where his special musical qualities received exceptional attention from a jury of leading musicians.
Fujita has been invited to appear in recital at major international festivals including the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Tsinandali and Riga-Jurmala festivals, among others, and he makes his highly-anticipated US recital debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2023. Recent and upcoming orchestral highlights include performances with the Gewandhausorchester, Munich Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Philharmonique de Radio France, Konzerthaus Berlin, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, RAI, Filarmonica della Scala, and Lucerne Festival orchestras, while his many conductor relationships include Vasily Petrenko, Christoph Eschenbach, Riccardo Chailly, and Andris Nelsons.
In November 2021, Fujita signed an exclusive multi-album deal with Sony Classical International. The new partnership sees him explore many facets of repertoire across several releases, starting with an eagerly-anticipated studio recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, which is due for release in October 2022, following an acclaimed series of performances of the complete sonatas at the Verbier Festival in 2021. Fujita has been invited to perform the same set of works, interspersed with sets of Variations, over five concerts for his debut at London’s Wigmore Hall at the end of the 22/23 season.
Starting piano lessons at the age of three, Fujita won his first international prize in 2010 at the World Classic in Taiwan, and became a laureate of numerous national and international competitions such as the Rosario Marciano International Piano Competition in Vienna (2013), Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (2015), and the Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition (2016). Mao Fujita is moving to Berlin for further studies with Kirill Gerstein.
Universally acclaimed as both conductor and pianist, and renowned for the breadth of his repertoire and the depth of his interpretations, Christoph Eschenbach belongs firmly to his native Germany’s intellectual line of tradition, yet combines this with a rare emotional intensity. Currently Musical Director of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, his previous appointments include musical directorships at the National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His tireless support of young talent includes being Artistic Advisor and lecturer at the Kronberg Academy. Among his awards garnered over five decades of recording are the German Record Critics’ Prize, the MIDEM Classical Award and a GRAMMY. He has been awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, and is a Commandeur de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a holder of the German Federal Cross of Merit and a winner of the Leonard Bernstein Award.
Discovered at the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2015, Lucas Debargue is today one of the most sought-after young pianists in the world and continues to impress with the originality of his musical talent. His encounter with Rena Shereshevskaya at the age of 10 marked the beginning of his commitment to a career as a concert pianist. Debargue draws his inspiration from literature, painting, cinema and jazz and offers interpretations that revisit the classics. He brings to light little-known parts of the repertoire, such as pieces by Karol Szymanowski, Nikolai Medtner or Milosz Magin. The Frenchman also devotes time to composition and has written about twenty pieces for solo piano and for chamber music ensembles.
With an innate musicality and overwhelming talent, Seong-Jin Cho has established himself worldwide as one of the leading pianists of his generation and most distinctive artists on the current music scene. His thoughtful and poetic, assertive and tender, virtuosic and colourful playing can combine panache with purity and is driven by an impressive natural sense of balance.
Seong-Jin Cho was brought to the world’s attention in 2015 when he won First Prize at the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, and his career has rapidly ascended since. In January 2016, he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. An artist high in demand, Cho works with the world’s most prestigious orchestras including Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, New York Philharmonic and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Conductors he regularly collaborates with include Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andris Nelsons, Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Simon Rattle, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Highlights of Seong-Jin Cho’s 2022/23 season include performances of the Brahms piano concerti at Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He notably returns to the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, to the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Andris Nelsons and performs the world premiere of Thierry Escaich’s new piano concerto with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov. A highly sought-after touring soloist, Cho embarks on several international tours, including those with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle to Japan and Korea, with the Dresden Staatskapelle and Myung-Whun Chung in Dresden and in Korea. He also performs with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, touring throughout Germany in Spring 2023.
An active recitalist very much in demand, Seong-Jin Cho appears in many of the world’s most prestigious concert halls including the main stage of Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Berliner Philharmonie, Konzerthaus Vienna, Prinzregententheater München, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Walt Disney Hall Los Angeles, Festival International de piano de la Roque d’Anthéron, and Verbier Festival. During the coming season he is engaged to perform solo recitals at the likes of Carnegie Hall, Boston Celebrity Series, Walt Disney Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Liederhalle Stuttgart, at Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Berliner Philharmonie, Musikverein Wien and he debuts in recital at the Barbican London. Cho also returns, three times this season, to Japan where he first appears in recital performances in Nagoya, Tokyo and Yokosuka in August 2022.
Seong-Jin Cho’s latest recording is his solo album entitled The Handel Project, released in February 2023, and in August 2021, he released Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Scherzi with the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda for Deutsche Grammophon. He had previously recorded his first album with the same orchestra and conductor featuring Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as well as the Four Ballades. His solo album titled The Wanderer was released in May 2020 and features Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy, Berg’s Piano Sonata op. 1 and Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor. A solo Debussy recital was also released in November 2017, followed by a Mozart album with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Yannick Nézet-Séguin in 2018. All albums have been released on the Yellow Label and have garnered impressive critical acclaim worldwide.
Born in 1994 in Seoul, Seong-Jin Cho started learning the piano at the age of six and gave his first public recital aged 11. In 2009, he became the youngest-ever winner of Japan’s Hamamatsu International Piano Competition. In 2011, he won Third Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at the age of 17. From 2012-2015 he studied with Michel Béroff at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. Seong-Jin Cho is now based in Berlin.