»A young cellist whose emotionally resonant performances of both traditional and contemporary music have earned her international recognition… Weilerstein is a consummate performer, combining technical precision with impassioned musicianship,« stated the MacArthur Foundation, when awarding American cellist Alisa Weilerstein a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship. Her debut recording of the Elgar and Elliott Carter cello concertos with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin was named BBC Music magazine’s ›Recording of the Year 2013‹.

The American-born cellist Alisa Weilerstein has attracted attention worldwide for her natural virtuosity, intensity of her playing and the spontaneity and sensitivity of her interpretations. In 2010, she was invited by Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic to play the Elgar concerto in the orchestra’s annual Europakonzert which that year took place in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre. She has appeared with all of the major orchestras throughout the United States and Europe with conductors including Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Paavo Järvi, Zubin Mehta, Yuri Temirkanov and Semyon Bychkov. She has also appeared at major music festivals throughout the world as a soloist, recitalist and as a chamber musician.

Weilerstein, whose honours include Lincoln Center’s 2008 Martin E. Segal Prize and the 2006 Leonard Bernstein Award, is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and Columbia University.

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‹.