Marina Grauman was born in 1994 in Saint-Petersburg into a family of musicians. Her musical career began at the Special Music School of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory (class of Prof. Savely Shalman), followed by bachelor’s and master’s studies and concert examinations at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin with Prof. Ulf Wallin: each degree with distinction. In 2015 she was awarded the DAAD prize for outstanding achievements by foreign students at German universities.

In 2018/19 she was a scholarship holder of the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (lecturer N. Bendix-Balgley) . From Season 2019/20 she is the 1st concertmaster of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

She is a founding member of the ensemble Trio Marvin (piano trio), which has been awarded the Grand Prix of the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and the 3rd prize of the ARD Music Competition, among others. The trio pursues a busy concert schedule in Germany and abroad and completed their master’s studies with the Artemis Quartet at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2020 with distinction.

Chamber music as well as solo performances have been broadcast by ARTE, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, BR, SWR, SR, ORF and Fine Music Radio Capetown.

Beata Antikainen (1993) is currently a member of the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker, where her mentor is Olaf Maninger. She studied at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin with Claudio Bohorquez and in the Sibelius Academy with Marko Ylönen.

Antikainen is a prize winner of the Finnish National Turku Cello Competition, the International Anton Rubinstein competition and the Peter Pirazzi Competition.

Antikainen is an active chamber musician and performs regularly in many festivals such as Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Helsinki Chamber Summer, Hauho Music Festival, Saimaa Music Festival, Sibafest, Avanti Summer Festival, Pyhäjärvi Chamber Music, ClasClas Festival and Eloa Festival.

She is the artistic director of the Hvitträsk Chamber Music Festival in Finland.

As a soloist she has played with such orchestras as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Helsinki Ensemble and Baden Baden Philharmonia.

She has received scholarships from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Pro Musica Foundation and the Wegelius foundation.

Coming from a family of musicians, Noora was forced to sit through concerts and rehearsals while growing up. She stubbornly searched for another path for her own future and for example competed in athletics until late teenage years. It wasn’t until one summer festival when she heard Schubert’s string quintet live and realized she had no choice but to continue her musical journey. Coming from Finland, Noora studied at the Sibelius Academy and then found her way to study first at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and currently at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen with Henri Sigfridsson.

Chamber music she cherishes closest to her heart and that has lead her to perform in interesting locations from fells in Lapland to the great Musikverein in Vienna.

During the pandemic an ever present curiosity for visual arts took a bigger role in her life and since she has painted with oil paints and aquarelles whenever she finds the time.

Philipp Schupelius (born 2003) is a cellist who performs in many genres and on numerous stages.

Trained by Ulrich Voss, Valentino Worlitzsch and for the past six years by Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Philipp has been able to explore many facets of the instrument. He is passionate about chamber music, jazz, klezmer, blues – all of that too. But his favorite music is classical, from baroque to modern. In addition to his admiration for the great cellists, Philipp also has a great admiration for the great comedians and entertainers, especially Billy Wilder, Charlie Chaplin and Hans Fallada.

During his musical life, Philipp has received numerous awards, each of which has opened new perspectives. Since October, he has been studying at the Kronberg Academy with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt – where new things are also opening.

Leon Lorenz (*12.12.1999 in Stuttgart) received his first percussion lessons at the age of six from Gergely Nagy at the Stuttgart Music School. At the age of twelve, he became the first percussionist there to be accepted into the study-preparatory class, which gave him increased training in chamber music, orchestra, music theory, ear training and composition. He expanded his orchestral experience over four years in the German National Youth Orchestra. In 2016, he joined Prof. Jürgen Spitschka at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule as a junior student. He deepened his education with Prof. Bernhard Wulff, as well as during a study visit to Japan with Prof. Keiko Abe. From 2018–2022 he studied with Prof. Alexej Gerassimez, Prof. Raymond Curfs, Prof. Wolfram Winkel, Claudio Estay and Carlos Vera Larrucea at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich. Since 2022 he has been studying at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Martin Grubinger. He won numerous first prizes at the following competitions: Bundeswettbewerb Jugend Musiziert (2012, 2015, 2016), Bundeswettbewerb Jugend Komponiert (2016, 2017), Opus ONE 2017, Wettbewerb bavrischer Musikhochschulen, as well as the Förderpreis at the Gasteig Kultur- Wettbewerb. Leon Lorenz can be heard as a soloist at renowned festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Heidelberger Frühling and the Mosel Music Festival. Leon Lorenz is a scholarship holder of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

The musical world of large concert halls currently combines numerous traditional and innovative elements. The well-tried is combined with the new, alienated, ‘updated’, contrasted, there are interdisciplinary productions, enriching use of lighting and video technology, unusual stage spaces and all kinds of ideas that are designed to acquire new audiences without scaring away tradition-conscious audiences. In this situation, being a multipercussionist now presents special challenges and opportunities at the same time. Multipercussion entails introducing many of the instruments used to the audience in their mode of operation and their special tonal, technical and playful-musical dimensions, since they are sometimes hardly known to anyone. The Ad Astra Percussion Ensemble (Deng Wenhui, Carlos Rubio Amondarain, Godwin Schmid and Leon Lorenz), which was founded in 2022, takes up and continues these ideas. The focus is on new commissioned compositions, and last but not least, the most important: each concert tells a story with a red thread that accompanies the audience on a journey in which they themselves are part of the action.

“To regard him simply as a huge talent is not enough: there is an element of pure genius in this young man” – Süddeutsche Zeitung 

Born in Athens of Albanian and Greek heritage, Jonian Ilias Kadesha has a keen interest in philosophy and rhetoric and possesses boundless imagination of sound and curation. His playing is characterized by stylistic accuracy and idiomatic interpretation from early to contemporary works, executed with immaculate articulation. 

Chamber music performances connect him with renowned musicians such as Martha Argerich, Steven Isserlis, Nicolas Altstaedt, Thomas Demenga and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Ilya Gringolts and Pekka Kuusisto. He has also performed at Kronberg Chamber Music Connects the World and the Verbier Academy Festival. Jonian Ilias Kadesha is a co-founder of the award-winning Trio Gaspard, which regularly performs at festivals and in music centers in Europe as well as the United States. Kadesha, together with cellist Florian Schmidt-Bartha, founded the CAERUS Chamber Ensemble in 2017, a flexible chamber ensemble composed of outstanding instrumentalists of the young European generation of musicians. 

On private loan, Kadesha plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1749). 

Timothy Ridout, a BBC New Generation Artist and Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellow, is one of the most sought-after violists of his generation. This season he appears as soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Odense, San Jose symphony orchestras and Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, amongst others. In 2020, Ridout won Hamburger Symphoniker’s inaugural Sir Jeffrey Tate Prize and joined the Bowers Program of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center in 2021.

In recent seasons, Ridout has made his debut with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Hamburger Symphoniker, Orchestre National de Lille, Camerata Salzburg, Graz Philharmonic, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Hallé, BBC Symphony, Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestra, and performed the Walton Concerto at the BBCProms/Sakari Oramo and with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/David Zinman. He has also worked with conductors including Christoph Eschenbach, Lionel Bringuier, Gabor Takács-Nagy, Sylvain Cambreling, Nicholas Collon and Sir Andras Schiff.

He plays on a viola by Peregrino di Zanetto c.1565–75 on loan from a generous patron of Beare’s International Violin Society.

In 2018, Tim Posner became the first British prize winner of the Karl Davidov International Competition in Latvia. Born in 1995, the cellist has performed as a soloist with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the London Mozart Players with conductors including Andrew Manze. Highlights of the 2022/23 season include a recording of Cipriani Potter’s Concertante with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the IMS Prussia Cove tour, and debut recitals in Gstaad and Het Concertgebouw.

As a chamber musician, Tim Posner plays regularly in several ensembles and in 2010 he formed the Teyber Trio with Tim Crawford and Timothy Ridout, with whom he is still active internationally. He has performed at several renowned chamber music festivals, including the Musikdorf Ernen-, IMS Prussia Cove (Open Chamber Music)-, Molyvos International Music Festival-, Kronberg Chamber Music Connects the World-, Lewes-, Peasmarsh- and Cheltenham-Festival. He has collaborated with many renowned musical personalities including Sir Andras Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Lars Vogt, Alasdair Beatson, Anthony Marwood, Alexander Rudin and the Doric Quartet.

Tim starts as principal cellist of the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in the 2022/23 season. He receives important impulses from Steven Isserlis.

Influenced significantly by some of the most renowned cellists of several generations and different musical cultures such as Julian Steckel, Heinrich Schiff, David Geringas, Natalia Gutman, János Starker, Wolfgang Boettcher, Orfeo Mandozzi and Bernard Greenhouse, Florian Schmidt-Bartha has experienced a versatile career as a chamber musician and soloist. He has worked with orchestras such as the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Würzburg, the State Philharmonic Orchestra of Kyrgyzstan, the National Chamber Orchestra of Moldova, the Romanian State Philharmonic Orchestra of Iasi, the Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of Sopot, the Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock, the Südwestdeutsche Kammerorchester Pforzheim, the Ensemble Reflektor and engagements at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Mozartfest Würzburg, the Stavanger Chamber Music Festival, the Cello Biënnale Amsterdam, the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Stars of the White Nights Festival St. Petersburg and at the Young Euro Classic Festival at the Konzerthaus Berlin. He has also devoted himself to contemporary music, working with composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, Jörg Widmann, Marc Sabat and Walter Zimmermann and premiering works by Alexander Khubeev, Konstantin Heuer, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Dmitri Kourliandski and Klaus Lang. Florian Schmidt-Bartha plays a cello by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume (Paris, 1844) and lives in Berlin.

Parisa Saeednezhad, born and raised in Tehran, studied her Bachelor’s degree in clarinet performance at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen. She completed her Master’s degree at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf and later earned her Artist Diploma at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. She participated in various master classes with Charles Neidich, Giora Feidman, Daniel Barenboim and James Campbell, among others. She was a scholarship holder of various foundations including DAAD and Live Music Now Rhein Ruhr. In 2015 she won the DAAD prize and the audience award+2nd prize of the Schumann Video Competition. She played several times with different ensembles and orchestras as well as Boulez Ensemble, Klassische Philharmonie Bonn, Berliner Symphoniker and Ensemble Luminar. She was the clarinetist of Staatsbad Philharmonie Kissingen in 2019 and has been a member of West Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim since 2018, with whom she has participated in Europe and US tour in famous halls as well as Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms in London), etc. In November and December 2022 Parisa Saeednezhad also taught the clarinet students of the Barenboim-Said Academy as an assistant to her former professor, Matthias Glander. 

George (Georgios) Banos was born in July 1999 in Athens, Greece. He began his violin studies at the age of 6. He has studied in Athens, Greece (2005–2014) with professors N. Sarandithou, D.Semsis, V.Pappas, in Innsbruck (2014–2015) with professor Christos Kanettis (Innsbruck Landeskonservatorium) and in Vienna (2015–2018) with Professor Lucia Hall (J. S. Bach Musikschule). Until the age of 14 he gave solo recitals and performed with distinguished Greek orchestras like Athens Camerata (2010) and Orchestra of Colours (2012) in Music Halls like Athens Megaron, Onassis Stegi, etc. He is also a member (and concertmaster) of Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra since its foundation (2017), performing  as a soloist too, under the distinguished Greek maestro and clarinetist D. Grammenos.

In 2018 he was accepted in for Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUC) Bachelor studies with violinist and Professor Pavel Vernikov and also in Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, Germany, where he was enrolled in October 2018 with a full scholarship, with Prof. Mihaela Martin and later with Prof. Michael Barenboim. 

Born in Israel. Attended Givatayim conservatory at age 5, under Prof. Shmuel Magen. Later he studied in Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts. from 2015–2018 studied with Prof. Hillel Zori at The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music. In 2022 finished his Bachelor’s degree studies with Prof. Frans Helmerson at the Barenboim- Said Akademie. Assif was a participant of the David Goldman music program. Assif played as the principal cellist of the YIPO, the Buchmann-Mehta school of music symphony orchestra and is part of the LGT young soloists. Nowadays he plays as the assistant principal cellist at the West-Eastern Divan orchestra of Daniel Barenboim and as an academy cellist for the Staatskapelle Unter Den Linden Berlin. Prizes he has won include Aicf scholarship, scholarships from Givatayim conservatory, scholarship from the IPO, First prize in the string and chamber music competitions of the Buchman-Mehta school, second prize in the Paul Ben-Haim competition He participated in Keshet Eilon and the Heifetz institute masterclasses.

Pianist Itai Navon is performing frequently as a soloist and a chamber musician in many concert halls across Europe, including Konzerthaus Berlin, Pierre Boulez Saal, Wigmore Hall, Beethovenhaus Bonn and more. He appeared with orchestras such as the Israel Camerata, the Israel Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and in music festivals such as Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Bath Music Festival, Musikfestspiele Saar and Aspen Music Festival and School. At the invitation of pianist Sir András Schiff, Itai Navon appeared in the Building Bridges series of concerts throughout Europe in the 2018/19 season. In 2021 he participated in a series of filmed masterclasses with Daniel Barenboim on Beethoven solo piano and cello sonatas. Born in Jerusalem in 1996, Itai Navon began his piano studies with Esther Narkiss at the Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and continued with Emanuel Krasovsky in the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv. Itai is a graduate of the Barenboim-Said Akademie, where he studied from 2018–2022 with Sir András Schiff. Currently, Itai is studying in the Sir András Schiff Performance Programme for Young Pianists at the Kronberg Academy. He has received valuable advice from renowned pianists such as Murray Perahia, Emanuel Ax, Angela Hewitt, Jonathan Biss, Robert Levin, and more. Itai is supported by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and Szloma-Albam-Stiftung.