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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 late quartets, and David Oistrakh, his career began in 1969 after winning the All-Union Competition in Leningrad, performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto under Yuri Temirkanov.
A professor in Vienna since 1984 and Graz since 1999, Kuschnir has mentored leading violinists such as Julian Rachlin, Nikolaj Znaider, Maria Dueñas, and Sergey Dogadin, whose numerous competition victories highlight his teaching excellence. He is also an honorary professor at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music.
Kuschnir founded the Vienna Schubert Trio and Brahms Trio, earning major awards, and has performed at renowned venues such as the Musikverein in Vienna, La Scala in Milan, and Wigmore Hall in London.
He is a recipient of Austria’s Grand Decoration of Honour and the Austrian Cross of Honour.
Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt is one of Germany’s leading cellists and a sought-after conductor. A prizewinner at the Rostropovich, Tchaikovsky and Leonard Rose Competitions, he has appeared as soloist with top orchestras including the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Sinfonia Varsovia, Tokyo Symphony, and the Houston Symphony, under conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowski and Jiri Belohlavek. A dedicated chamber musician, he has shared the stage with artists like Lang Lang, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham and Leonidas Kavakos, and was a former member of the Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center. His recordings on Sony Classical and Capriccio have earned critical acclaim, including a Diapason d’Or and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Schmidt is also founder and principal conductor of Metamorphosen Berlin, an ensemble with its own concert series at the Konzerthaus Berlin. He appears regularly in a dual role as conductor and soloist. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello once owned by Hugo Becker.
Estelle has played in many countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. She has been invited to play at festivals such as the Verbier Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Sion Festival, the Festival International de Colmar or the Festival Pablo Casals alongside musical partners such as Gautier Capuçon, Renaud Capuçon, Alexandra Conunova, Raphaëlle Moreau, Tai Murray, Lena Neudauer, Sergey Ostrovsky, Tedi Papavrami, Pierre Génisson, Ralph Manno, Finghin Collins, Anais Crestin, Christian Chamorel, Gaspard Dehaene, François Dumont, François-Frédéric Guy, François Killian, Cédric Pescia or the Quatuor Sine Nomine among many more. She has performed at venues including the Victoria Hall, the Fondation Gianadda, the Musée du Louvre, the NCPA in Beijing, the Oriental Art Center in Shanghai, the CCK in Buenos Aires or the Sodre in Montevideo.
Her orchestral repertoire ranges from the C.P.E Bach concertos to those of Gulda and Ligeti. From the 2017-2018 season for a period of three years, Estelle Revaz will be the artist in residence of the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, conducted by Arie van Beek. Her many projects include an album centered around the concertos by F. Martin and a world premiere by X. Dayer.
In CANTIQUE (NEOS, 2015), her first release, she performs as soloist in the concertos of E. Bloch (Schelomo) and A. Pflüger (Pitture, world premiere) – an album enthusiastically received by critics. As Le Temps emphasises, “CANTIQUE is a serious, incisive and demanding record where the orchestra and the soloist play with finesse and intelligence in a beautiful musical symbiosis”. Her album Bach & Friends (Solo Musica/Sony 2017) for solo cello was also greeted with great excitement by the specialist classical music press, with Pizzicato writing: “Estelle Revaz presents a demanding programme that she interprets at a very high technical level. The sound is perfectly pure, the phrasing is extremely clear and the dynamics are exceptionally refined”. Following her most recent album, recorded as a duo and entitled FUGATO (Solo Musica/Sony 2017), Le Courrier described Estelle Revaz as “one of the rising stars of a new generation of great artists”, while La Liberté spoke of her “majestic programme in which the cello sings magnificently, at times either powerful or languid”.
Radio and television appearances include national radio stations in France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, several visits to the news programs. More recently, Estelle coproduced a five-part radio program called “Estelle et le violoncelle” for Swiss radio Espace 2/Radio Télévision Suisse.
After starting out in Switzerland, Revaz studied in France at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (Jérôme Pernoo), and in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (Maria Kliegel).
While still very young, Estelle won several awards. The First Prize of the Fondazione Antonio Salieri di Legnago enabled her in 2004-05 to embark on her first tour as a soloist to Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. In addition, her playing was ackowledged by the City of Geneva, the canton of Valais, the Fonds Français Instrumental, the Leenaards, Little Dreams, Dénéréaz, Kremer, Thiébaud-Frey and Patiño Foundations.
In 2014, she was admitted to the Verbier Festival Academy and within this context awarded the Rotary Prize.
Since 2015, Estelle has been a member of the “Forum des 100”, a group of personalities considered to be shaping the future of Switzerland.
Since 2017, she has been cello and chamber music teacher at the Kalaidos University for Music in Zurich, Switzerland. Moreover, she loves to give master classes in Europe, Asia and South America. She has recently done research work on “The development of artistic identity in higher instrumental teaching” which was published in March 2019 at Harmattan (in Collection Sciences de l’éducation musicale).
Estelle Revaz currently plays a cello built by G. Grancino (1679) and a bow by J. Eury (1825) that have been provided to her by two generous Swiss patrons.
Arthur Trælnes was born in 2002 in Lausanne. He began learning the violin at the age of 6 and, at 16, joined the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne (HEMU) in Gyula Stuller’s class, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree in 2022. He then joined the class of Alexander Kerr (former concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam) at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University (Bloomington, USA), where he earned a Solo Performance Diploma in 2023 and continued with Master’s studies.
Arthur has won numerous prizes in national and international competitions as a soloist, including 3rd Prize and the Audience Prize at the Tibor Varga Junior Competition in 2018, which led to an invitation from Gidon Kremer to perform as a soloist with his orchestra in Latvia. He also won 1st Prize at the International Violin and Orchestra Competition “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, and 3rd Prize at the Franco Gulli Competition in Rome in 2024.
Arthur has performed as a soloist multiple times in Switzerland, Germany, Georgia, Italy, Latvia, and the United States. He served as concertmaster of the Verbier Festival Orchestra from 2022 to 2024, working 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 participate in masterclasses, including at the Kronberg Academy Festival in 2021 (with Kolja Blacher) and at the Thuringian State Music Academy in Sondershausen (with Friedemann Eichhorn) in 2022, where he performed Tchaikovsky’s Concerto with orchestra. In November 2024, he performed Mozart’s 5th Concerto with orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York during a masterclass with Maxim Vengerov.
Arthur plays a Giovanni Battista Ceruti violin from 1797 (Cremona, Italy). During the 2023 edition of the Verbier Festival, he had the opportunity to perform on a Stradivarius (“Hrimali,” 1712).
He also 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 the town of Wodzislaw Slaski, Poland in 1994, and started playing the piano at the age of five. However, her fascination with the subtle possibilities of the flute led her to take it up at the age of ten, and her continued passion for its rich and delicate sound has developed into a rich and creative career. Her career as a flute soloist began when she performed with the Katowice Symphony Orchestra at the age of 13, and has since led her to perform, compete and study in many of Europe’s most prestigious musical centres.
In order to further her musical knowledge, Zofia closed out her secondary school studies in Wroclaw, at the specialised music mchool “Karol Szymanowski“ under the tutelage of Cezary Traczewski. During this time, she had the opportunity to meet and learn from several inspiring performers and teachers, including Prof. Felix Renggli, and it was following a masterclass with him that Zofia decided to audition for his class in Basel’s Music Hochschule. Over the next few years, she worked closely with Prof. Renggli on her musical development, as well as discovering greater opportunities as a performer with smaller ensembles and orchestras in music festivals across Germany and Switzerland.
Zofia concluded her Bachelor’s (earning the highest grade possible and a distinction) in Basel in 2016, and immediately commenced a Masters in Performance at the same school. However, her initial postgraduate studies were interrupted when she was selected as a member of the Berlin Philharmonic’s Karajan Academy in 2017. Over the next two years, she continued to learn and develop as a member of this select institution under the guidance of Mathieu Dufour.
Since then she had opportunity to appear in the most renowned music festivals in Europe like Verbier Festival, Gezeiten Konzerte, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Krzyżowa Music, Bad Kissinger Sommer.
Zofia was awarded the position of Principal Flute with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and she played there between 2019–2021, and has relished the opportunity to perform the greatest works of the orchestral canon in a demanding and artistically excellent atmosphere. Now she holds the temporary position in Sinfonieorchester Basel. She also regularly appears as a solo flutist with orchestras such as the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, the Camerata Zurich and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, having worked with conductors such as Simon Rattle, Ivan Fischer, Zubin Mehta and Paavo Järvi.
She has also participated successfully in numerous competitions across Europe, and was awarded a scholarship by the Mozart Gesellschaft Dortmund in 2018, Villa Musica in 2022. She was also a Fellow of the Polish Ministry of Culture.
Across all of these accomplishments and performances, Zofia remains committed to her own artistic development and growth. She is searching constantly for new ways of expression. She composes her own music and artistic creations, that helps her to understand the world of emotions and classical music even deeper.
Amanda Håøy Horn is a Norwegian violinist based in Oslo. Chamber music has played a substantial part in her musical life, and she has guested several Norwegian festivals. After finishing her studies with Elise Båtnes at the
Norwegian Academy of Music, she gained further insight as an academist in the Oslo Philharmonic and at the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, performing under Valery Gergiev. This ultimately led her to pursuing a career in the Oslo Philharmonic, the Norwegian Opera & Ballet, Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Ensemble Allegria and on tour at the Salzburg Festival, BBC Proms and the Lucerne Festival. She plays on a violin made by Gaetano Pollastri and bows by Sartory and Rolland
Fleuranne Brockway is quickly gaining international recognition for her “lusciously dark centred voice” (Herald Sun). Brockway has captivated audiences throughout her native Australia, and Europe alike. In 2022, Brockway won first place and best female voice at the 8th Concorso Lirico Internazionale di Portofino and first place in the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Competition. She was also a prizewinner at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2023. Since moving to Europe, Brockway has maintained an impressive performance schedule in such roles as Charlotte (Werther), Carmen (Carmen), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Hänsel (Hänsel und Gretel), Fenena (Nabucco), and as Suzuki (Madame Butterfly) with the Bregenzer Festspiele. Brockway is a graduate of the Accademia del Belcanto ‘Rodolfo Celletti; and made her debut in Italy at the Festival della Valle D’Itria as Carlotta in La Scuola dei Gelosi by Salieri.
Jack Pepper is one of the youngest national radio presenters in the UK. At 19, he helped build and became a presenter on Scala Radio, the UK’s newest national classical radio station. Jack joins a line-up that includes some of the UK’s best-loved presenters, including Simon Mayo, Angellica Bell and Mark Kermode. For five years, his weekly Saturday show, Jack Pepper’s Culture Bunker, went behind-the-scenes in music. His guests have included some of the biggest stars in the arts world. Jack is also is also a successful composer.
Dr Yannis Rammos is a research associate in music theory at the EPFL Digital & Cognitive Musicology Lab, and member of the piano faculty at European University Cyprus. An internationally active piano pedagogue trained in Russia, in 2022/23 he led classes at the Verbier Festival Academy, the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität für Musik, the Estonian Academy for Music & Theater, and Conservatorium van Amsterdam, among other venues. His research is motivated by technical, interpretive, and philosophical aspects of classical musical artistry, focusing on the fissure between structure and expression, anxieties of “authenticity” and “originality,” topics in piano timbre semantics, the use and disuse of music-analytical metaphors in (historical) performance treatises, and Russian musicological discourses. In most cases it engages traditions of linearity, including but not limited to Schenker’s, 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, graduating from the latter with a Ph.D. in classical performance. Recent publications have appeared in Music & Letters, Quodlibet, and Music Theory & Analysis. He is winner of a Fulbright fellowship in piano. At EPFL he is currently working on a formal model of hidden (‘middleground’) motivic repetition, one of the most elusive, yet startling, features of the tonal canon.
Cellist Aleksey Shadrin, who was a member of the Kronberg Academy Master Program, was born into a family of musicians in Ukraine. He won the first prize of the 4th M. Lysenko International Music Competition in 2012. In 2018, he has been awarded the 3d Prize at the Prague Spring competition.
Following his early successes in numerous competitions, including the National Ukrainian Competition for Strings in Lvov/Lemberg and the 8th National Ukrainian Competition “New Names” in Kiev, he became in 2004 a scholar of the International Foundation of violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov.
In 2005, Aleksey Shadrin was a finalist in the 3rd David Popper International Competition in Hungary, and in 2008, he won the 2nd prize at The International Competition in Minsk. Following his competition successes, he has performed in major concert halls of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Holland and Portugal.
Aleksey Shadrin has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, the National Opéra national de Montpellier, and the Sudwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz.
In 2016, he made his debut appearance at the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2017, he appeared as a soloist with the NDR Radiophilharmonie with Andrew Manze in the Grosser Sendesaal in Hannover, and made his debut appearance at the Hamburg Chamber Music Festival.
Aleksey Shadrin received his Bachelor and Master of Musical Arts at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hanover with Prof. Leonid Gorokhov.
He is currently studying with Frans Helmerson at the Kronberg Academy.
Since September 2020, he’s an Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, studying with Gary Hoffman.