The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini; of the Philharmonia's younger conductors, the most important to its development was Herbert von Karajan who, though never formally chief conductor, was closely associated with the orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Philharmonia became widely regarded as the finest of London's five symphony orchestras in its first two decades.
Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor. From the age of five, when he began to play the violin, Giulini's musical education was expanded when he began to study at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome at the age of 16. Initially, he studied the viola and conducting; then, following an audition, he won a place in the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Anna Moffo was an American opera singer, television personality, and actress. One of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation, she possessed a warm and radiant voice of considerable range and agility. Noted for her physical beauty, she was nicknamed "La Bellissima".
Peter Manning FRSA is a British conductor and violinist.
Philippe Honoré is a French violinist who has been a regular recitalist in France and the United Kingdom. He was appointed Violin Professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London in September 2012. He has performed widely in broadcast recitals on French radio and television.
Roy Goodman is an English conductor and violinist, specialising in the performance and direction of early music. He became internationally famous as the 12-year-old boy treble soloist in the March 1963 recording of Allegri's Miserere with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, under David Willcocks.
Andrea Een is a violinist, violist, Hardanger fiddler, poet, and Professor Emerita of Music at St. Olaf College.
Richard Rood is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist based in New York City. His career has spanned classical music, chamber music, contemporary jazz, and commercial music including Broadway and film soundtracks.
Gülsin Onay is a leading Turkish concert pianist of German descent, based in Cambridge, England.
Paul Mauffray is an American conductor and laureat of the 2007 Bartók International Opera Conducting Competition, The American Prize for Conductors, and 1996 Freedman Conducting Competition. He has studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, Louisiana State University, Justus Liebig University (Giessen), Masaryk University (Brno), and earned a Masters of Music degree in Orchestra Conducting as an Associate Instructor / Assistant Conductor at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.
Paul Hostetter is an American conductor, the Ethel Foley Distinguished Chair in Orchestral Activities for the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, the Conductor and Artistic Advisor for the Sequitur Ensemble, and the Founder and Artistic Adviser to the Music Mondays chamber series in New York City. He has held appointments as the Director of the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University where he also was the Director of Orchestral Studies/Associate Professor, the Music Director of the Colonial Symphony, the Music Director of the High Mountain Symphony, Artistic Director of the Winter Sun Music Festival, Music Director of the New Jersey Youth Symphony, and the Associate Conductor for the Broadway productions of Candide and George and Ira Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm.
The Philharmonia Virtuosi is a chamber orchestra that first performed in 1974. It was founded by Richard Kapp, who conducted the orchestra until the time of his death in 2006.
Richard Kapp was an American conductor.
Sophia Reuter, born in 1971, in Dresden, Germany, comes from a family with a long musical history. Her father was the late Rolf Reuter, a conductor, and her grandfather, the late Fritz Reuter, was a composer. Sophia is a violinist and violist with a varied solo, orchestral, chamber music and pedagogical career.
Oscar Ravina, born in Warsaw, Poland, was a violinist, violin teacher and concertmaster based in New York, who has had a prolific career as a performer as well as being a current professor emeritus at Montclair State University, where a talent grant in his name is regularly given to outstanding full-time freshmen studying string instruments.
Carlo Ponti Jr. is an Italian orchestral conductor working in the United States. He is the son of late film producer Carlo Ponti Sr. and Italian actress Sophia Loren, and the older brother of film director Edoardo Ponti.
Gerald Drucker was a British classical double bass player, photographer and double bass teacher. Principal Double Bass at the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, New Philharmonia Orchestra, and finally the Philharmonia Orchestra of London. He formed the London Double Bass Ensemble in the 1980s.
Mela Tenenbaum, born in Ukraine, is a classical violinist and violist, also playing viola d'amore. She graduated from the Kyiv Conservatory and performed the Kyiv Philharmonic and other orchestras. She inspired composers such as Dmitri Klebanov to write pieces for her.
Nikki Chooi is an American-Canadian classical violinist. Nikki is currently Concertmaster of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He previously served as Concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York. He is a prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition and Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition and 1st prize winner of the 2013 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Montreal Symphony Manulife Competition, and Klein International Strings Competition.
Kevin Zhu is an American concert violinist. He is a recipient of the 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant and was the first prize winner of the 55th edition of the International Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy, aged just 17. He was also the first prize winner in the junior division of the 2012 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in Beijing, China. In 2019, he made his debut at Carnegie Hall at Weill Recital Hall.
