The English Chamber Orchestra (ECO) is a British chamber orchestra based in London. The full orchestra regularly plays concerts at Cadogan Hall, and their ensemble performs at Wigmore Hall. With a limited performance size, the orchestra specializes in 18th-century music and was created to perform Baroque Music. The orchestra regularly tours in the UK and internationally, and holds the distinction of having the most extensive discography of any chamber orchestra and being the most well-traveled orchestra in the world; no other orchestra has played concerts (as of 2013, according to its own publicity) in as many countries as the English Chamber Orchestra.
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.
The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1806. Its first performance by Franz Clement was unsuccessful and for some decades the work languished in obscurity, until revived in 1844 by the then 12-year-old violinist Joseph Joachim with the orchestra of the London Philharmonic Society conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. Joachim would later claim it to be the "greatest" German violin concerto. Since then it has become one of the best-known and regularly performed violin concertos.
Leif Ove Andsnes is a Norwegian pianist and chamber musician. Andsnes has made several recordings for Virgin and EMI. In 2012, Andsnes signed with Sony Classical, and recorded for the label the "Beethoven Journey" project, which included the five piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The works were recorded over three years, beginning with Nos. 1 and 3 in 2012, followed by Nos. 2 and 4 in 2013 and the Fifth Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy in 2014. He is represented by IMG.
Sergiu Celibidache was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Radio France, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and many other European orchestras such as the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra or the London Symphony Orchestra.
Yundi Li, also known mononymously as Yundi, is a Chinese classical concert pianist. Yundi is especially known for his interpretation of Chopin, Liszt and Prokofiev. He is considered one of the greatest contemporary interpreters of Chopin.
Nikolai Demidenko is a Russian-born classical pianist.
Rafał Blechacz is a Polish classical pianist who rose to fame after winning the XV International Chopin Piano Competition in 2005.
Maria João Alexandre Barbosa Pires is a Portuguese classical pianist, widely regarded as one of the leading interpreters of the repertoire of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Piotr Anderszewski is a Polish pianist and composer.
Jan Lisiecki is a Canadian classical pianist. He performs internationally with orchestras and conductors. He has been a recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon since the age of 15. At age 18, Lisiecki was the recipient of Gramophone’s Young Artist Award and the Leonard Bernstein Award.
The discography of classical pianist Lang Lang includes nine studio albums, four live albums, one single, one compilation, two soundtracks, and three contributions to releases not under his name. His first album was released in 2000 under Telarc International Corporation. In 2003, he signed a contract with Deutsche Grammophon and released several albums with them. In February 2010, Lang Lang signed with Sony Classic.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese pianist. Born in Beijing, she began learning piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
The Russian and American classical virtuoso pianist Vladimir Horowitz was a recording artist for over 60 years; beginning in 1926 on a piano roll system for Welte-Mignon, then with audio recordings, starting in 1928 for the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Victor. Horowitz continued to record for a variety of record labels throughout his life. Between 1962 and 1973 he recorded for Columbia Masterworks In 1975, Horowitz returned to RCA, with which he recorded a series of live recitals. For the last years of his life, between 1985 and 1989, Horowitz recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Horowitz's final recording, with Sony Classical, was completed in November 1989, four days before his death. This final recording consisted of repertoire that he had never previously recorded. His discography contains numerous albums and compilations of works by a variety of composers. Horowitz has also appeared in several video items, most of these were produced in the later years of his life.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese classical pianist who records on the Deutsche Grammophon label. She has released six CDs on with Deutsche Grammophon: Sonatas & Etudes in 2009; Transformation in 2010; Rachmaninov in 2011; and Fantasia, in March 2012. She has also performed on the soundtrack to the film Summer in February. A fifth Deutsche Grammophon album, released internationally in February, 2014, featured the Piano Concerto no. 2 of Sergei Prokofiev and Piano Concerto no. 3 of Sergei Rachmaninov, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra; and in another 2014 release for DGG, she partnered the violinist Leonidas Kavakos in the violin sonatas of Johannes Brahms.
Vilde Frang Bjærke is a Norwegian classical violinist.
Eric Lu is an American classical pianist. The recipient of the gold medal at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018, he has performed with many of the world's major orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, and on tour with the Orchestre national de Lille. He records for Warner Classics under an exclusive contract, and has released critically acclaimed recordings of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Schubert, and Schumann on the label.
Beatrice Rana is an Italian pianist.
The recording career of Russian pianist and composer Daniil Trifonov initially focused on the music of Frédéric Chopin. His first three albums, recorded in 2010 and released in 2011, exclusively consisted of works of Chopin: the first album, Daniil Trifonov plays Frédéric Chopin, consisting of music performed live in recitals in Italy, was released by Decca Records in April; his second album, Chopin: Mazurki; Konzert, containing performances from the 16th Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, was released in May; and finally, his third album, Chopin, a studio recording, was released in July. Trifonov's next album, Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1, released in 2012, included a performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev.
Bruce Liu is a Canadian pianist. Born in Paris and raised in Montreal, he began to play the piano at eight years old and was performing by the age of eleven. In 2021, he rose to widespread renown after winning the XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition.
