The youngest ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition, Akiko Suwanai enjoys a prestigious international career performing in concert and recital in the major cities of Europe, North America and Asia. Recent highlights include performances with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Recently she has toured with the NDR Sinfonieorchester (under Christoph von Dohnányi), the London Symphony Orchestra (under Valery Gergiev), the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (under Claus Peter Flor), The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen and the Orchestre de Paris (under Paavo Järvi). Akiko also collaborates with renowned conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrew Davis, Lorin Maazel, David Robertson, Susanna Mälkki, Neeme Järvi, Sakari Oramo and Seiji Ozawa.

Akiko Suwanai studied at the Toho Gakuen School of Music with Toshiya Eto, at the Columbia University and the Juilliard School of Music with Dorothy DeLay and Cho-Liang Lin, and also at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin with Uwe-Martin Haiberg.

Suwanai has a broad repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers. Her extensive discography with Universal Music has garnered much critical acclaim. Her latest CD entitled ›Emotion‹ was recorded with pianist Itamar Golan. She has won numerous prizes and awards, such as the International Paganini Competition in Italy, the International Japan Competition and the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Belgium. Since the end of 2012, Akiko Suwanai has been Artistic Director of the NIPPON International Music Festival.

Estonian conductor and Grammy Award winner Paavo Järvi has been Artistic Director of The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen, his only German orchestra, since 2004. One highlight of the collaboration were the celebrated concerts of the Beethoven cycle, which received critical acclaim worldwide. Järvi received numerous awards for the recordings, including the ›Echo Klassik‹ as ›Conductor of the Year‹ and the prestigious ›Annual Prize of the German Record Critics‹.

Following the Beethoven project, he and the orchestra tackled the symphonic works of Schumann and Brahms, which received similarly enthusiastic reviews. Paavo Järvi is also Principal Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Artistic Advisor to the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and the Järvi Summer Festival in Pärnu, Estonia, and since 2019/20 Artistic Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. He regularly makes appearances as guest conductor with orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras, the Staatskappelle Dresden and the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago and the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. In 2015, he was named ›Artist of the Year‹ by the renowned British magazine Gramophone and the French magazine Diapason. In 2019, he received the ›Opus Klassik‹ as ›Conductor of the Year‹.