Baiba Skride’s natural approach to her music-making has endeared her to some of today’s most important conductors and orchestras worldwide. She is consistently invited for her refreshing interpretations, her sensitivity and delight in the music. The list of prestigious orchestras with whom she has worked include the Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouworkest, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and NHK Symphony. Notable conductors she collaborates with include Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Edward Gardner, Susanna Mälkki, Andris Nelsons, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Andris Poga, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Tugan Sokhiev, John Storgårds and Juraj Valcuha.

Skride was born into a musical Latvian family in Riga where she began her studies, transferring in 1995 to the Conservatory of Music and Theatre in Rostock. In 2001 she won the first prize of the Queen Elisabeth Competition. Baiba Skride plays the Yfrah Neaman Stradivarius kindly loaned to her by the Neaman family through the Beare’s International Violin Society.

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Described by the Gramophone as ‘a pianist in full flower of his mature, imaginative artistry’ in 2022, Peter Jablonski is an award-winning internationally acclaimed Swedish artist. He is among the leading pianists of his generation, and during the last 30 years on international stages has performed with over 150 orchestras, given over 2,000 concerts, and has been on 25 tours of Japan. Discovered by Abbado and Ashkenazy and signed by Decca in his 17th year, he went on to perform, collaborate, and record with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, which include the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Kirov (now Mariinsky), La Scala Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich, Orchestre Nationale de France, NHK Tokyo, DSO Berlin, Warsaw Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Cleveland Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Valery Gergiev, Andris Nelsons, Daniel Harding, Kurt Sanderling, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, and Myung-Whun Chung.

He has appeared in concert and recitals in famous venues around the world, which include the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican in London, Philharmonie Berlin, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Hollywood Bowl Los Angeles, Salle Pleyel Paris, Musikverein Vienna, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, among many others.

He has performed and recorded the complete piano concertos by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Bartók, and all piano sonatas by Prokofiev. During his three-decade-long career he developed a diverse repertoire that includes works by Barber, Gershwin, Szymanowski, Lutosławski, Copland, Stenhammar, with most recent additions of such composers as Alexey Stanchinsky, Ronald Stevenson, and Grażyna Bacewicz.

He worked with composers Witold Lutosławski and Arvo Pärt, and had a number of works composed for, and dedicated to him, including Wojciech Kilar’s Piano Concerto, for which he won the Orpheus award for the world premiere performance at the Warsaw Autumn Festival. He remains a supporter of today’s composers and regularly gives world premieres of new works.

Jablonski’s extensive discography includes recordings he has made for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, Altara, Octavia, and Ondine labels. He has received numerous  awards for his recordings, which include the Edison award for best concerto recording of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and Lutoslawski’s Paganini Rhapsody with Ashkenazy and RPO for Decca. He was presented with the Gramophone Classical Music Award for his Deutsche Grammophone recording of works by Cécile Chaminade with Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg.

He maintains a busy recording schedule, and his collaboration with Ondine has produced a number of well-received recordings. His recording of solo piano works by Grażyna Bacewicz was awarded the French Académie Charles Cros Award in December 2022, and it has been listed among best classical music and best solo piano recordings of 2022 in the Gramophone. Peter Jablonski is the recipient of the Litteris et Artibus medal for his servvices to culture, granted to him by the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf. He is also the winner of the prestigious prize Årets Svensk i Världen (International Swedish Personality of the Year), receiving it before ABBA and Astrid Lindgren. In May 2022 he was elected into the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2023, Jablonski became the global ambassador for Karol Szymanowski, in a multi-year project run by the Institute of Adam Mickiewicz and music publisher PWM, during which he will perform Szymanowski’s piano works around the world, starting with the Wigmore Hall recital in September 2024.

www.peterjablonski.com

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Jun Märkl is a highly respected interpreter of core Germanic repertoire and is renowned for his refined and idiomatic explorations of the French Impressionists. He currently serves as music director of the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and is the chief conductor of the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, Netherlands. He is also principal guest conductor of the Oregon Symphony.

Märkl’s expertise in the world of opera and long relationships with the state operas of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Berlin, Semperoper Dresden, The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera and New National Theatre in Tokyo have been complemented over the past decades by his orchestral music directorships of the Orchestre National de Lyon, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Basque National Orchestra and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. Märkl regularly guest conducts leading international orchestras, and has led The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo, among many others.

He also has an extensive discography of over 55 recordings, and in 2012 he was honoured with the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He studied in Munich with Sergiu Celibidache and at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. Märkl is highly dedicated to work with young musicians: for many years he worked as principal conductor at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo and the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. He teaches as a guest professor at the Kunitachi College of Music, Tokyo and recently founded the National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan.

www.junmarkl.com

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British conductor Nicholas Collon is recognised for his elegant conducting style, searching musical intellect and inspirational music-making. He is Founder and Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra and has been Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony since 2021 (renewed until 2028). He was Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest in Den Haag (latterly also Artistic Advisor) 2016–2021, and was Principal Guest of the Gürzenich Orchester from 2017–2022.

With the Finnish Radio Symphony he has toured to the BBC Proms, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and to Germany and Estonia. Their expanding discography together for Ondine includes acclaimed discs of Sibelius, Lutosławski, Adès and Wennäkoski (winning the 2023 Gramophone Award for Best Contemporary Recording), with Richard Strauss, Elgar, Holst, and more Sibelius to come. Their 2024/25 concert season includes Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie and Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps as part of a Paris theme, and works by Finnish-American composer Lara Poe. Every concert is broadcast live on Finnish National TV.

Collon leads the Aurora Orchestra at the BBC Proms every year in their hugely popular memorised performances, this year Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, televised live. Aurora are Resident at Kings Place and at the Southbank Centre where they have reinvented the concert format with their ‘Orchestral Theatre’ Series. This season they tour to major German cities, and continue to appear regularly at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Cologne Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and festivals such as Bremen, Rheingau, Schleswig Holstein and Gstaad. They have recorded for Warner, winning the Echo Klassik Award for ‘Klassik Ohne Grenzen’ in 2015, and latterly for Deutsche Grammophon.

Collon debuted with the Dresden Staatskapelle in Spring 2024, and in 24/25 makes his first appearances with the San Francisco Symphony, Munich Philharmonic and WDR Symphony, and returns to the DSO Berlin. He regularly conducts orchestras such as the BBC Philharmonic (appearing at the BBC Proms with them in his second televised Prom this year), City of Birmingham Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Danish National Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Dresden Philharmonic, and has also guested with Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, Minnesota Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Vienna Radio Symphony, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe among many others.

Collon has conducted over 250 new works, including the UK or world premieres of works by Unsuk Chin, Brett Dean, Phillip Glass, Colin Matthews, Anna Meredith, Nico Muhly, Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Judith Weir, and Du Yun. Opera productions have included Peter Grimes and Don Giovanni for Oper Koeln, The Magic Flute at English National Opera, Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream at Welsh National Opera, The Rape of Lucretia for Glyndebourne Touring Opera, and The Turn of the Screw at the Aldeburgh Festival with Aurora Orchestra. Born in London, Nicholas is a violist, pianist and organist by training, and studied as Organ Scholar at Clare College, Cambridge.

www.nicholascollon.co.uk

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