Juraj Valčuha is world-renowned for his astonishing expressiveness, musicianship, technical precision, and stage presence. In 2022, he becomes Music Director Designate of the Houston Symphony. He is Music Director of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and First Guest Conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin since 2016. He was Chief Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI from 2009 to 2016. Valčuha’s international career began in 2005–2006 with a series of remarkable debuts (Orchestre National de France, Philharmonia London, Munich Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies. He has toured with renowned orchestras around Europe and is an acclaimed opera conductor. Credited with many world premieres, he also performed Steve Reich’s Four Sections in the composer’s presence. Juraj Valčuha won the Premio Abbiati 2018 in the category Best Conductor. He studied composition and conducting in his birthplace, Bratislava, and at the St Petersburg Conservatory and Paris Conservatoire.

Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman is renowned for her passionate performances and superlative musicianship. Following her sensational performance with the Budapest Festival Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall in 2013, she made her USA orchestral debut with the Dallas Symphony and Jaap van Zweden, playing Bernstein’s Serenade. In 2015, she debuted with the San Francisco Symphony, performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Her extensive international career includes performances with virtually every orchestra in The Netherlands, among many other European orchestras. An avid chamber musician and recitalist, Liza Ferschtman has been Artistic Director of the Delft Chamber Music Festival for more than a decade. In the USA, she has performed at such venues as Alice Tully Hall in New York and the Library of Congress in Washington. The daughter of Russian musicians, Ferschtman received the Dutch Music Prize in 2006, the highest accolade awarded to a musician in The Netherlands.

The Minsk-born, young French cellist Ivan Karizna studied with Jérôme Pernoo at the Paris Conservatoire. At 19 he won Third Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition (2011), also garnering top prizes in several international competitions before and since. He has toured all continents, performing as a soloist with many renowned orchestras including the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and many others led by prominent conductors, in the world’s most prestigious halls. He has collaborated with great artists, such as András Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Nicolas Angelich, Yuri Bashmet, Christian Tetzlaff, Jerome Ducros, Dong-Suk Kang, Ivry Gitlis, and Mathieu Herzog, among others. In 2020, he recorded a CD dedicated to Beethoven with the Greek pianist Vassilis Varvaresos for the French label Mirare. Ivan Karizna plays a 1760 Tassini cello ex Paul Tortelier, on generous loan from a European benefactor.