Arie Van Lysebeth was the President of the Jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition from 1996 to 2018. He took up the violin at the age of four. He completed his higher education at the Brussels Conservatory in music theory, bassoon, chamber music, and orchestral conducting. Following a competition, he was appointed bassoon soloist of the Belgian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Two years later, he came joint first in the Prague International Bassoon Contest. He also studied conducting under Bruno Maderna in Salzburg and under Pierre Boulez in Switzerland. Starting in 1970, he conducted the Flemish Chamber Orchestra, both in Belgium and abroad. As a guest conductor, he has appeared with the major Belgian orchestras as well as with symphony orchestras in the United States of America, Argentina, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany. He has performed with many famous soloists, including Igor Oistrakh, José Van Dam, Murray Perahia, and Augustin Dumay. From 1995 to 2004 he was the regular conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Brussels Conservatory, where he taught chamber music for many years (1970-1994) and served as director (1994-2003). From 2004 to 2014, he was the artistic director of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.

Gautier Capuçon is a true twenty-first century ambassador for the cello. He performs internationally with many leading conductors and instrumentalists and is the founder and leader of the ‘Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle’ at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and a passionate ambassador for the Association Orchestre à l’École, which introduces thousands of children to classical music in schools throughout France. This year, he launched his own foundation to support talented young musicians at the beginning of their careers, and to increase his engagement with young artists. During the summer of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Gautier Capuçon brought music directly into the lives of families across France with his musical odyssey, Un été en France. Devoted to exploring and expanding the cello repertoire, he performs a large range of pieces and new works every year. His current projects include collaborations with Lera Auerbach, Richard Dubugnon, Danny Elfman, and Thierry Escaich. This season sees him perform with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. He is an artist in residence at both the Philharmonie de Paris and the Wiener Konzerthaus.

Marta Casals Istomin was born in Puerto Rico to a family of amateur musicians. After her first music studies in Puerto Rico, she was awarded a scholarship to study cello at New York’s Mannes School of Music. She was married to Pablo Casals from 1957-1973, and to the American pianist Eugene Istomin from 1975-2003. She taught cello at the Conservatory of Puerto Rico and was visiting cello professor at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. From 1980 to 1991, she was Artistic Director of the Kennedy Center in Washington. She was President of the Manhattan School of Music in New York from 1992 to 2005, General Director of the Rencontres Musicales d’Evian (1990-97) and a member of the National Council on the Arts (1990-1997). Besides her activities for the Casals Foundation, Marta Casals Istomin is on the Board of all the main cultural institutions of Puerto Rico, of the Marlboro Festival, the Manhattan School of Music, the Kronberg Academy and The Nippon Music Foundation. The governments of Spain, France, Germany and Catalonia have decorated her with their highest civilian honors. In 2015, she was awarded the Living Legend Award by the Library of Congress in Washington.

Henri Demarquette was born in 1970. He started at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique in Paris at the age of thirteen; a pupil of Philippe Muller and Maurice Gendron, he was unanimously awarded the First Prize. Performing regularly in public from a very early age, he caught the attention of Yehudi Menuhin, who invited him to play under his conducting in Paris and Prague, which gave a considerable boost to his international career. He has played with many outstanding pianists, including Boris Berezovsky, Frank Braley, Brigitte Engerer, Michel Dalberto, François-Frédéric Guy, and Jean-Bernard Pommier. A highly versatile musician, Henri Demarquette also pursues a variety of original projects, including a duo with the accordionist Richard Galliano, a line-up that brings together the cello and an a cappella choir under the name of Vocello, and a collaboration with Victor Villena and the Quinteto El Después (Together, A Tango Dream). He champions rarely heard twentieth-century works and has made the first recordings of pieces by Jean Cras, Florent Schmitt, and Jean Françaix. He has also premiered many contemporary works, by Olivier Greif, Pascal Zavaro, and Eric Tanguy, among others. In France, the Académie des Beaux-Arts has awarded Demarquette the Prix de la Fondation Simone et Cino del Duca.

Roel Dieltiens is a Belgian cellist who has gained international recognition for his expressive artistry and stylistic versatility. Over a career spanning more than 45 years, he has distinguished himself both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. He has developed a highly distinctive musical voice on both the baroque and modern cello, which has been widely recorded and praised for its intensity, refined phrasing, and strong rhetorical presence. His repertoire ranges from early Baroque to Romantic and contemporary music. Roel Dieltiens is the founder of the acclaimed Ensemble Explorations and taught at the Hochschule der Künste in Zürich as professor of cello for two decades. He regularly gives masterclasses and is a sought-after jury member at major international cello competitions.

David Geringas was taught by Mstislav Rostropovich and won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1970. He emigrated to West Germany in 1975 and went on to develop an outstanding international career. His discography, which includes nearly 100 recordings, bears witness to his inquisitiveness and to the extraordinary diversity of his interests and repertoire. His recordings have won numerous awards, including the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros for his complete Boccherini concertos. Committed to the music of his time, he has premiered many works and works have been dedicated to him by Sofia Gubaidulina, Ned Rorem, Peteris Vasks, Erkki-Sven Tür, and Anatolius Senderovas. He is also an orchestral conductor, performing all over the world and making numerous recordings. Since the Soviet regime came to an end and his country became independent, David Geringas has worked tirelessly to promote the music of his homeland, Lithuania, of which he has become a true cultural ambassador. He is an honorary professor at the Moscow Conservatory and at the Central Conservatory in Beijing. These days, he gives a great many masterclasses all over the world and also teaches at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.

After studying in Moscow under Galina Kozolupova, Natalia Gutman went on to further studies in Leningrad under Rostropovich, who invited her to join his teaching team even before she had completed her training. She has been a laureate of many competitions, winning the gold medal at the Vienna Youth Festival in 1959 and First Prize at the Munich Competition in 1967. When it had barely begun, her international career was interrupted by the Soviet authorities. She resumed it in 1978, and has since worked with orchestral conductors such as Temirkanov, Masur, Sawallisch, Haitink, and Claudio Abbado, to whom she was very close. She is a passionate advocate of contemporary composers, especially Denisov, Gubaidulina, and Alfred Schnittke, who dedicated his First Sonata and First Concerto to her. Her love of chamber music has led her to play with, among others, her late husband Oleg Kagan, Richter, Argerich, Bashmet, and Virsaladze. Natalia Gutman teaches at the Moscow Conservatory, at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, and the Scuola di Musica in Fiesole (Italy). She gives masterclasses all over the world.

An experienced soloist and a keen chamber musician and teacher, Marie Hallynck studied under Reine Flachot, Edmond Baert, János Starker, and Natalia Gutman. A laureate of the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition in 1992 and of the Juventus Foundation, and a Rising Star of the ECHO network in 2000, she was selected as Musician of the Year by the Belgian music press in 2002. She has performed with orchestras such as the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Brussels Philharmonic, and the Belgian National Orchestra. On concert and on disc, she has been an enthusiastic advocate of the Belgian repertoire and has premiered concertos by Peter Swinnen, Hao-Fu Zhang, Jean-Paul Dessy, and Dirk Brossé, recording the latter’s concerto as soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra. In a duo with the pianist Cédric Tiberghien, she has made several memorable recordings. In 2006, together with the pianist Muhiddin Dürrüoglu and the clarinettist Ronald Van Spaendonck, she founded the Kheops Ensemble, tackling a broad range of chamber music. She has been teaching at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles since she was nineteen.

Frans Helmerson first studied his instrument under Guido Vecchi in Gothenburg, before going on to further studies under Giuseppe Selmi in Rome and William Pleeth in London. He also benefited from the advice and encouragement of Rostropovich and Celibidache. In 1971, he won the Cassado Competition in Florence. His career as a soloist has taken him to every continent. He has had fruitful collaborations with great conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, Colin Davis, Neeme Järvi, Evgeni Svetlanov, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Herbert Blomstedt, Sergiu Comissiona, Kurt Sanderling, and Mstislav Rostropovich. His recordings of the Dvořák and Shostakovich concertos are regarded as benchmarks. He is also a keen chamber musician and performs regularly at festivals, including the Verbier, the Pablo Casals, and the Ravinia festivals. From 1994 to 2001, he was artistic director of the Korsholm Music Festival in Finland. He founded the Michelangelo String Quartet in 2002 with Mihaela Martin, Stephan Picard, and Nobuko Imai. Frans Helmerson teaches at the Kronberg Akademie and is a Guest Professor at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin.

Born in Vancouver, Gary Hoffman made his debut at Wigmore Hall in London at the age of fifteen. In 1979, when just twenty-two, he became the youngest professor at the school of music of the University of Indiana. In 1986, at the Rostropovich Competition in Paris, he won the Grand Prize, which opened the way to an international career. He has performed as a guest with the world’s leading orchestras (including the Chicago Symphony, the London Symphony, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France) and has played under great conductors such as André Previn, Herbert Blomstedt, James Levine, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Charles Dutoit. His concerto repertoire includes more than fifty works, from C.P.E. Bach to Dvorák and from Saint-Saëns to the composers of today. He is also an experienced chamber musician, whose recordings of sonatas and trios (by Tchaikovsky, Arensky, and Prokofiev, among others, and, recently, by Mendelssohn) have been widely acclaimed. He has taught for many years at major academies and festivals (including the Aspen Music Festival, the Gregor Piatigorsky Seminar, and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki) and, since 2011, at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.

Anssi Karttunen was taught by Erkki Rautio, William Pleeth, Jacqueline du Pré and Tibor de Machula. An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, his collaborations with a number of composers have contributed to the development of the instrument’s technique. Many of them, including Salonen, Lindberg, Saariaho, Tan Dun, Wallin, Dusapin and Jolas, have written works for him. He knows no limits, whether in terms of instruments (he enjoys playing the baroque cello, the piccolo and even electric cello) or of repertoire. His varied discography includes countless contemporary works, as well as the Beethoven sonatas on period instruments. He has been solo cellist with the London Sinfonietta and founded the string trio Zebra Trio. From 1994 to 1998, he was artistic director of the Avanti ! Chamber Orchestra. He directed the Helsinki Biennale in 1995 and 1999 and the Musica Nova Helsinki festival in 2015. Since 2008 he has led Creative Dialogue, a workshop for composers and performers. Anssi Karttunen lives in Paris, where he teaches at the École Normale de Musique.

Mischa Maisky is the only cellist to have studied successively with Mstislav Rostropovitch and with Gregor Piatigorsky. Born in Latvia, he grew up in Russia and then emigrated to Israel. He has collaborated with leading conductors, including Bernstein, Maazel, Mehta, Muti, Ashkenazy, Barenboim, Jansons, Dutoit and Dudamel. Among his regular chamber music partners are Martha Argerich, Radu Lupu, Nelson Freire, Evgeny Kissin, Itzhak Perlman, Lang Lang, Peter Serkin, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Vadim Repin, Maxim Vengero, Joshua Bell, Julian Raclin and Janine Jansen. An exclusive artist for Deutsche Grammophon for 30 years, he has made more than 35 recordings, notably with the philharmonic orchestras of Vienna, Berlin and Israel, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. This extensive discography has earned him numerous distinctions such as the Record Academy Prize in Tokyo, the Echo Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, the Grand Prix du Disque in Paris, the Diapason d’Or de l’Année and several Grammy Award nominations. Mischa Maisky has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Istanbul Music Festival, the Honorary Fellow Award from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and the Honorary Membership from the Royal Academy of Music, and was made an Honorary Academician by the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.

Antonio Meneses was born into a family of musicians in Recife in Brazil in 1957. He started to study the cello at the age of ten and studied under Antonio Janigro in Düsseldorf and later in Stuttgart. He won the first prize at the Munich Competition in 1977 and at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1982, and had the honour of being loaned Pablo Casals’s cello. He is frequently invited to perform with the greatest orchestras all over the world and has played under the most eminent conductors, including Karajan (with whom he recorded Don Quichotte by Richard Strauss and the Brahms Double Concerto), Abbado, Muti, Chailly, Rostropovich, Jansons, Masur, Temirkanov, and Thielemann. A keen chamber musician, Antonio Meneses was a member of the famous Beaux Arts Trio for ten years and plays regularly in a duo with Maria-João Pires. His extensive discography includes the complete Beethoven sonatas (with Menahem Pressler) and the complete works for cello of his compatriot Heitor Villa-Lobos. He gives masterclasses in Europe (at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena), Canada, and Japan. He teaches at the Musikhochschule in Berne since 2008.

Truls Mørk, who was born in 1961, first studied the cello with his father, before going on to further studies under Frans Helmerson, Heinrich Schiff, and Natalia Schakowskaya. He made a big impression at a number of international competitions, including the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1982, the Cassado Competition in Florence in 1983, and the Naumburg Competition in New York in 1986. Those successes led to engagements with outstanding orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. He has worked with Mariss Jansons, David Zinman, Manfred Honeck, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Simon Rattle, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, among others. He is a lover of contemporary music and has premiered more than thirty works by Krzysztof Penderecki, Einojuhani Rautavaara, John Storgårds, and Pavel Haas, among others. He founded the Chamber Music Festival in Stavanger, of which he is artistic director. His extensive discography (on Virgin, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, and Ondine) includes benchmark versions of the Shostakovich concertos and Britten suites.

Jian Wang began learning the cello from his father at the age of four and went on to study at the Shanghai Conservatory. Noticed by Isaac Stern during the filming of the documentary film From Mao to Mozart, he enrolled at Yale School of Music in 1985 and studied under Aldo Parisot. Since then, he has played with many prestigious orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Koninklijk Concertgebouw Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Boston and London, the BBC orchestras, the orchestras of Zürich and La Scala, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestre de Paris, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. He has made numerous recordings, including Elgar’s Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, an album of short pieces for cello and guitar entitled Rêverie, the Double Concerto by Brahms with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Gil Shaham, Haydn’s Concertos with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, and Bach’s Cello Suites for Deutsche Grammophon China.

Pieter Wispelwey was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands in 1962. He studied the cello under Dicky Boeke and Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam, and later under Paul Katz in the United States and William Pleeth in England. In 1992, he became the first cellist to receive the Nederlandse Muziekprijs. He has appeared as a soloist with the greatest orchestras worldwide, including the Boston Symphony, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The conductors he has played under include Iván Fischer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Herbert Blomstedt, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Kent Nagano, Neville Marriner, and Philippe Herreweghe. In 2012, Pieter Wispelwey founded Quartet-Lab with Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Pekka Kuusisto, and Lilli Maijala. Equally at home on period instruments and on the modern cello, he has a repertoire that covers three centuries, from Vivaldi to Ligeti. His primary passion remains Bach’s Suites for solo cello: he frequently performs all six in public and has recorded them three times. He has made thirty albums for Channel Classics, Onyx, and Evil Penguin Classic.