Born in 1989, the Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva has not only won over an international audience but the critics also rave about her »angelic« voice (The New York Times), her »pure tone« (Opernwelt) and her »immaculate technique« (The Guardian).  She began piano and singing lessons aged only five and later studied at the famous Moscow Conservatory. She completed her studies at the Guildhall School in London. This singer won first prize at the Paris Opera Competition in 2009, making her the youngest winner in the competition’s history. Her appearance with Rossini’s ›Fra il Padre‹ at the Classical Brit Awards in London’s Royal Albert Hall was also a sensation. The following year, the journal Opernwelt named her ›Young Artist of the Year‹.

From 2012, this young soprano appeared for three consecutive seasons as Asteria alongside Plácido Domingo und Bejun Mehta in Handel’s ›Temerlano‹ at the Salzburg Festival. In recent years, Julia Lezhneva has also toured in Australia and has given concerts in Lausanne, Toulouse, St Petersburg, Madrid, Lucerne, in the Konzerthaus Berlin and in the Berlin Philharmonie.  She also gave her debut in the Gewandhaus Leipzig with Herbert Blomstedt. Julia Lezhneva is the 2019 ›Artist in Residence‹ at the Kissinger Summer, where she first appeared on stage with the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen. Further debuts of her 2019/20 season will be concerts with Adam Fischer and the Berlin Philharmonic in October and at the Musikverein in Vienna in February 2020.

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‹.