The violinist, conductor and composer Pekka Kuusisto is well known for his artistic freedom and refreshing approach to the repertoire. This versatile musician debuted as a violinist in 2022 with the Berlin Philharmoniker and will be appearing in 2023 with, among others, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Featured among the most recent highlights as a conductor are appearances with the Concertgebouworkest, the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen, whose ›Artistic Best Friend‹ he has been since 2017.

Since 2022, Pekka Kuusisto has been Artistic Director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and for the 2023/24 season, will also be the First Guest Conductor and Artistic Co-Director of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, who regularly premieres new works, and as a talented improvisor, Pekka Kuusisto reguarly collaborates with people from across the artistic spectrum. Unfazed by the conventional boundaries of genre, his most recent projects have included collaborations with composer and pianist Hauschka and percussionist Samuli Kosminen, Dutch neurologist Erik Scherder and electronic music pioneer Brian Crabtree, among others. In 2022, Kuusisto will release his first album as a conductor together with violinist Vilde Frang and the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen.

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‹.