Andris Nelsons, Music Director / City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

“The greatest and brightest hope on the international conductor’s scene. The 30-year-old Latvian is a paragon of musicality.” Der Tagesspiegel
Andris Nelsons is one of the most sought-after young conductors on the international scene today, earning himself a distinguished name both on the opera and concert podiums.
Over the next few seasons he will continue collaborations with Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Het Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Berlin, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. He recently made his debut in Japan, on tour with Wiener Philharmoniker, and next season he will make his debut with Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.
In 2009/2010, Andris Nelsons appeared at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera New York and Wiener Staatsoper, and is returning to each house. In summer 2010 he appeared for the first time at Bayreuther Festspiele as Musical Director for Lohengrin, in a new production directed by Hans Neuenfels. He returns to Bayreuth in 2011.
In 2008, Nelsons was appointed as Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and has enjoyed a critically acclaimed first few seasons. With CBSO he is undertaking extensive European tours, including regular appearances at such summer festivals as Lucerne Festival, BBC Proms and Berliner Festspiele. Furthermore, they have an exciting recording collaboration with Orfeo International. Releases have so far included a disc of Richard Strauss orchestral works, praised by The Times as: “one of the most sumptuous and refined accounts of ‘Ein Heldenleben’ ever put on to disc”, a recording of Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5, a recording of Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 and one of Stravinsky’s The Firebird (the latter three discs have each been recognised with a Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik). A disc featuring Strauss’ Alpine Symphony was released in 2011.
Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons began his career in music as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra and has also won many prizes for his singing. He was recipient of the prestigious Latvian Grand Music Award for outstanding achievement in music in 2001 and, after graduating in the same year, he went to St. Petersburg to study conducting with Professor Alexander Titov. He has been studying privately with Mariss Jansons since 2002 and completed his tenure as Principal Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany, in 2009. From 2003-2007 he was Music Director of the Latvian National Opera.

Violinist Hilary Hahn’s probing interpretations, technical brilliance, and commitment to new music and the commissioning process have not only made her one of the most sought-after artists of our time, but also brought her love of classical music to a diverse audience. Although only 32 years old, her international fame and recognition, including two Grammies, multiple Diapason “d’Or of the Year” and “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” prizes, and the 2008 Classic FM / Gramophone Artist of the Year, are a testament to her talent and drive.
Hahn appears regularly with the world’s elite orchestras and on the most prestigious recital series. During the 2010-2011 season, she embarked on a demanding recital tour covering 56 cities across four continents. After a planned tour in Japan in April 2011 was canceled due to the March tsunami disaster, Hahn organized four benefit concerts in the US to help aid the recovery, continuing her constant efforts to heighten the relevance of music to contemporary culture and world events.
Hahn begins her 2011-2012 season with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in its opening gala concert performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto No 1 in E Minor. This year marks the 20th anniversary of her major orchestra debut. She will continue appearing with orchestras throughout the season, including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the NDR Radiofhillarmonie de Hannover, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Camerata Salzburg, and the Pittsburgh, Houston, San Francisco, Montreal, and Alabama symphony orchestras. Hahn will tour the US in the fall, premiering the first half of her commissioning project premiere In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores with long-time recital partner Valentina Lisitsa at the piano. Hahn will then concertize through Germany, France, Spain, and Eastern Europe.
In the 15 years since she began recording, Hahn has released 12 feature albums on the Deutsche Grammophon and Sony labels, in addition to three DVDs, an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack, an award-winning recording for children, and various compilations. In repertoire as diverse as Bach, Stravinsky, Elgar, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Mozart, Schoenberg, Paganini, Spohr, Barber, Bernstein, Korngold, and others, her recordings have received every critical prize in the international press, and have met with equal popular success. All have spent weeks on Billboard’s Classical Top Ten list. A recent concerto recording, which paired Schoenberg and Sibelius, debuted at No. 1 and spent the next twenty-three weeks on the Billboard classical charts. This acclaimed album brought Hahn her second Grammy: the 2009 Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra. Her first Grammy win came in 2003 for her Brahms and Stravinsky concerto album. In a special project last season, Hahn’s former teacher, composer Jennifer Higdon, wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning concerto for her. The piece was released in September 2010, along with works by Tchaikovsky. In October 2011, Hahn will release her newest album, Charles Ives: Four Sonatas.
Hahn shows her commitment to contemporary music with her In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores. For this project, she has commissioned over two dozen composers to write short-form pieces for acoustic violin and piano. She will premiere these works over the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons, recording them along the way for release in the 2013-2014 season. Hahn remains one of the few performers dedicated to recording every new piece she commissions. Nearly a decade ago, Hahn began to notice that new encore pieces were not being showcased as much as other types of contemporary works. Shorter pieces remain a crucial part of every violinist’s education and repertoire, and Hahn believes potential new favorites should be encouraged and performed as well. Twenty-six leading composers from around the world will be featured in the project, and the final, twenty-seventh composer will be decided in a non-traditional fashion later in the year.
Hahn has appeared on the covers of all major classical music publications and has been featured in mainstream periodicals such as Vogue, Elle, Town and Country, and Marie Claire. In 2001, she was named “America’s Best Young Classical Musician” by Time. And in January 2010 she appeared as guest artist, playing Bartok and Brahms, on The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien.
An engaging personality, Hahn is an avid writer and interviewer, posting journal entries and information for young musicians and concertgoers on her website, hilaryhahn.com. In video, she produces a YouTube channel, youtube.com/hilaryhahnvideos, and serves as guest host for the contemporary classical music blog Sequenza21. Elsewhere, her violin case comments on life as a traveling companion, on Twitter: twitter.com/violincase. In addition, Hahn has participated in a number of other musical projects and collaborations. In 2004, she was a soloist on the Oscar-nominated soundtrack to the film The Village. She has made guest appearances on two albums by the alt-rock band …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and on Grand Forks by Tom Brosseau, and she has collaborated and toured with folk-rock singer-songwriter Josh Ritter.

A truly multi-faceted and charismatic artist – for pianist Hélène Grimaud music is a limitless passion. Hélène regularly appears with the most important orchestras in the world, playing with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Philharmonia Orchestra and Münchner Philharmoniker, as well as all the great orchestras in North America. She has performed with three generations of conductors, including Kurt Masur, Bernard Haitink, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Neeme Järvi, Pierre Boulez, Ricardo Chailly, Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Jurowski, Fabio Luisi and Andris Nelsons. She was soloist at the Last Night of the BBC Proms 2008.
An ardent and committed chamber musician, Hélène Grimaud performs regularly in the most prestigious festivals and cultural capitals with a wide range of collaborators including Thomas Quasthoff, Rolando Villazòn, Jan Vogler, Truls Mørk, Clemens Hagen and the Capuçon brothers. In 2009 she performed hugely successful debut recitals in China and Korea and further concerts in Europe. In 2010 she appeared as Artiste Etoile in four concerts at the Lucerne Festival. An international recital tour encompassing Europe, USA and Japan dominated her 2010/11 season with repertoire ranging from Mozart to Bartòk. In between recitals Hélène Grimaud has performed regularly in concert throughout the season – in Moscow with Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, in St Petersburg with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra, in Beijing with David Zinman and the China National Symphony Orchestra, in Germany with the Munich Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann and in the States with both the San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestras. This summer she appears at leading European festivals including Beethovenfest Bonn and the London Proms.
Highlights of autumn 2011 included a European tour with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Antonio Pappano, a week-long Paris residency in November entitled Domaine Privé and a further Paris concert with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev. In March 2012 Hélène Grimaud returns to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic for concerts with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and in April she joins the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons for performances in Munich.
An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2002, Hélène is one of DG’s most important recording artists with a string of imaginative and highly successful discs. This autumn she released her debut of Mozart ‘s Piano Concertos No.19 and No.23 with Kammerorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the disc also features a collaboration with singer Mojca Erdmann on a recording of Mozart’s ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te? KV 505’. Her other recent release, Resonances, features music by Mozart, Berg, Liszt and Bartok. Previous DG recordings include Bach’s solo and concerto works in which she directed Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen from the keyboard, and a Beethoven disc with Staatskapelle Dresden and Vladimir Jurowski, ‘Reflection’ and ‘Credo’ (both of which feature a number of works linked thematically), and a Chopin and Rachmaninov Sonatas disc. Hélène also features on two recent DVD releases: 2010 ECHO Klassik award winning DVD of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major with Vladimir Jurowski and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Recipient of numerous awards worldwide, in 2009 Hélène Grimaud received the Musikfest Bremen Award. She has been appointed ‘Officier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ by the French Ministère de la Culture in 2002 and ‘Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite’ in 2008. In 2004 she received a ‘Victoire d’honneur’ at the Victoires de la Musique and in 2005 she won the ECHO ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ Award. Author of two very successful books, “Variations Sauvages” and “Leçons Particulières”, she champions many charitable causes, including the Wolf Conservation Center which she founded in upper New York State in 1999, the International Children’s Camp Villa Sans Souci, the Worldwide Fund for Nature and Amnesty International.