Gilles Ledure (° 1970, Leuven - Belgium) studied musicology at the universities of Leuven and Paris. Since 2011 he is the general manager of the Brussels cultural house Flagey. He started his career in the music world in Belgium at La Monnaie/De Munt and with the Belgian National Orchestra. In 2006 he headed abroad, first to Luxemburg to lead the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and shortly afterwards to France, where he was artistic director of the Orchestre National de Lille and the Lille Piano Festival until 2011. In 2003 he founded Tactus (Young Composers’ Forum), the non-profit organization that supports young composers in the creation and performance of orchestral works in collaboration with various cultural institutions. Particularly attentive to the training of young talents, Gilles Ledure is on the Board of Directors of the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel and is a member of the Artistic Council of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. In 2014 he received the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France, for his contribution to cultural and artistic relations between Belgium and France. Since 2019, he is President of the Jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition’s instrumental sessions : Violin 2019, Piano 2021, and Cello 2022.

Pierre Amoyal won First Prize in the violin at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 12. At 17 he moved to study in Los Angeles under Jascha Heifetz, with whom he played chamber music and made his first recordings. Five years later he was playing all over Europe and in Japan, performing with the most prestigious orchestras and the greatest conductors (including P. Boulez, S. Ozawa, C. Dutoit, G. Herbig, L. Maazel, K. Sanderling, and M.W. Chung). His many recordings for Decca have included Fauré’s sonatas, the Chausson Concert, and the Franck sonata, as well as the Dutilleux, Saint-Saëns, and Respighi concertos. Appointed a professor at the Conservatoire National in Paris at a very young age, he has also taught at the Lausanne Conservatory, Haute École de Musique, where he founded the Camerata de Lausanne in 2002, recently renamed CameratAmoyal. Made up of 14 talented young musicians from all over the world, the Camerata has recorded a number of CDs. Pierre Amoyal teaches as well at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite. In 2006 he received the Prix de la Ville de Lausanne. Pierre Amoyal owns one of the world’s most celebrated violins, the 1717 ‘Kochansky’ Stradivarius, which was miraculously found in 1991 after being stolen in 1987.

The Canadian violinist Martin Beaver was a member of the Tokyo String Quartet from 2002 to 2012. In addition, his career as a soloist has taken him to every corner of the world, with, among others, the San Francisco Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, and the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, under conductors such as Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Raymond Leppard, Gilbert Varga, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. In chamber music, he has appeared alongside Leon Fleisher, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, Sabine Meyer, and Yefim Bronfman. Martin Beaver studied under Claude Letourneau, Carlisle Wilson, Victor Danchenko, Josef Gingold, and Henryk Szeryng. A laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1993, he has also won prizes at the Indianapolis and Montreal international competitions and has made a number of recordings for René Gailly, Naim Audio, Naxos, Biddulph, Toccata Classics, SM 5000, and Harmonia Mundi. He has served on the juries of a number of competitions, including the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Montreal, Osaka, and Melbourne competitions. Martin Beaver has taught at the Peabody Conservatory and New York University, among other institutions, and has been an artist in residence at the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded the Sanford Medal. He currently teaches at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.

Corina Belcea was born in Romania in 1975 and studied the violin with Radu Bozgan and Stefan Gheorghiu. At the age of sixteen she moved to London to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School with Natalia Boyarskaya and finished her studies at the Royal College of Music with Felix Andrievsky. It was at the Royal College of Music that the Belcea Quartet was born; the ensemble of which she has been founding member and first violin for 23 years. Together with the Belcea quartet she has won the Bordeaux and Osaka competitions. She is also a prize winner at the Yehudi Menuhin, Kloster Schöntal and Wieniawski competitions and has performed at the Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room in London, the Atheneum in Bucharest, and the Châtelet and Champs-Élysées theatres in Paris. Corina Belcea was a professor of chamber music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and since 2011 she teaches the violin at the University of the Arts in Bern. She plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1755), kindly loaned to her by the MERITO String Instruments Trusts Vienna.

Born into an artistic family in Paris, Patrice Fontanarosa showed his great talent at an early age as he won a number of international awards. For a number of years he was leader (concertmaster) of the Orchestre national de France, in which capacity he worked with great conductors such as L. Maazel, S. Ozawa, L. Bernstein, G. Solti, C. Abbado, and K. Böhm. He has also been music director of the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie and leader of the I Virtuosi di Roma orchestra. Currently artistic adviser to the Orchestre Pasdeloup, he has taught at the CNSM in Paris and runs an advanced class at the Schola Cantorum. Convinced that music has something to offer everybody, he has tackled the great violin repertoire in a great variety of settings as he seeks to reveal the wealth and emotional power of his artistry to as wide an audience as possible. In 1995 he won a Victoire de la Musique award for his recording of Le Violon de l’Opéra for EMI. He won the award again in 1997 for his recording with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, conducted by Georges Prêtre, of the violin concerto dedicated to him by Marcel Landowski. Other distinctions he has been awarded include : Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Médaille Vermeille de la Ville de Paris, Officier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite, Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

Pamela Frank has built up an international reputation in a number of quite different fields. As a soloist, she has appeared with renowned orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. She also appears regularly with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, with which she has, for example, recorded the five Mozart concertos, conducted by David Zinman. In great demand as a chamber musician, Pamela Frank has been a guest at many festivals, including the Aldeburgh, Verbier, Salzburg, Edinburgh, Tanglewood, Marlboro, and Ravinia festivals. She has recorded a Schubert album and has also recorded the Beethoven sonatas with her father, Claude Frank. In 1999, she was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize. She is a professor at the Curtis Institute of Music and teaches every year at the Verbier, Tanglewood, and Ravinia festivals. Since 2008, she has been Artistic Director of Evnin Rising Stars, a mentoring programme for young artists at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. Her latest initiative is the establishment of Fit as a Fiddle, a joint project with the physiotherapist Howard Nelson that aims to prevent and treat injuries to musicians.

Second prize and Public's prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2009, Lorenzo Gatto's talent has also been recognised with his winning of many other prizes, such as the 1st prize and Public's Prize at the International RNCM Competition in Manchester and the 1st prize at the International Andrea Postacchini Competition in Italy.
From the age of 12, Lorenzo Gatto has been invited to play at famous festivals and renowned halls around the whole of Europe such as the Centre for Fine Arts and Flagey in Brussels, Philharmonie in Luxemburg, Salle Cortot in Paris, the Seoul Arts Center, the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, etc. It is also with orchestras that he has enriched his experience, notably with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (under the direction of V. Sinaisky), the Belgian National Orchestra (under the direction of W. Weller, G. Varga, E. Aadland, E. Mazzola, P. Davin and S. Blunier), the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra (deFilharmonie, under the direction of P. Herreweghe and J. van Zweden), the Philharmonic Orchestra of Luxemburg (under the direction of E. Krivine), the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia (under the direction of P. Goodwin et A. Dumay), the New Russia Orchestra,… and, of course, through his various encounter with great musicians such as Seiji Ozawa, Midori, Pamela Frank, Robert Mann, Zakhar Bron, Salvatore Accardo, Julian Rachlin,…
Born in Brussels (Belgium) in 1986, Lorenzo Gatto started studying the violin at the age of 5. As soon as he was 12 he joined the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music in Véronique Bogaerts' class where, at 17, he gained the higher diploma for violin with the highest distinction. After this he continued to perfect his playing under Herman Krebbers in Holland, Augustin Dumay at the Queen Elisabeth College of Music and Boris Kuschnir in Austria (Kunstuniversität, Graz and Konservatorium Wien).
In 2010, Lorenzo Gatto has made a Enescu-Martinu recording for the Fuga Libera label with the pianist Milos Popovic (“Deconstructing the Wall”), but also Vieuxtemps' Concerto n°4 with the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra (Belgium) under the direction of Patrick Davin. He has also recorded string trios and Schubert's „The Trout" as well as the Divertimento (Mozart) album, for the UT3-records' label. He has also recorded Martinu's Concerto n°2 with the Belgian National Orchestra under the direction of Walter Weller.
Having been elected Rising Star 2010-2011, he has performed on the major European stages, such as the Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Wiener Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and then in Barcelona, Baden Baden, Hamburg, Cologne, Luxemburg, Athens, etc. In the same season he has held a residential post at the Brussels Center for Fine Arts, concerts in South Korea, concerts with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra (deFilharmonie), the Belgian National Orchestra, the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra...
As a committed musician, in 2007 Lorenzo Gatto co-founded the Cl4ssiK association, with the aim of encouraging young people to be more aware of classical music.
He plays a J.B. Vuillaume violin.

Born in 1945, Koichiro Harada studied the violin, chamber music, and orchestral conducting at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo and at the Julliard School under Hideo Saito, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Dorothy DeLay, and Ivan Galamian. In 1969, he founded the Tokyo String Quartet, of which he was first violin for twelve years. He later taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and at the Aspen Music Festival. In 1983, Koichiro Harada returned to Tokyo and founded a number of other chamber music ensembles, including NADA and the Mito Quartet. He has also become a well-known orchestral conductor and works regularly with ensembles such as the New Japan Philharmonic, the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In parallel with his concert activities, Koichiro Harada teaches at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo and serves regularly on the juries of a number of international competitions, including the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Wieniawski and Paganini competitions; in 2005, he chaired the jury of the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition in Paris.

Yossif Ivanov made an early impression on the international scene, taking First Prize at the Montreal Competition at the age of 16 and Second Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition two years later. Last season has seen him make his debut at Wigmore Hall in London with his brother Philippe and link up again with the Belgian National Orchestra and the Orchestre de Picardie. He has performed with the most eminent orchestras and conductors. Together with the violinists Lorenzo Gatto and Hrachya Avanesyan he founded the Trilogy violin ensemble, which performs not only classical masterpieces but also film music and jazz standards throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. His first recording, released on Ambroisie/Naïve, won the Diapason d’Or de l’Année in 2006. His first disc with orchestra, devoted to Bartók’s Second Concerto and Shostakovich’s First, was also very well received by the musical press. For his second CD with an orchestra, featuring works by Henri Dutilleux, Yossif Ivanov was accompanied by the Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Lyon under Kazushi Ono. His first steps in music were followed by further studies under Zakhar Bron, Igor and Valery Oistrakh, and Augustin Dumay. Yossif Ivanov is the youngest violin teacher at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Brussels.

Acclaimed by the specialist critics, Dong-Suk Kang 's fluid technique and perfect bowing have established him as one of the greatest violinists of our time. He has played with the most prestigious orchestras worldwide, under renowned conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur, Paavo Järvi, Yehudi Menuhin, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Myung-Whun Chung, Leonard Slatkin, Rudolf Barshai, Mariss Jansons, Roger Norrington, Paavo Berglund, and Evgeny Svetlanov. His recordings have received glowing reviews and have won the Grand Prix du Disque de l’Académie Charles Cros and the Grand Prix de la Nouvelle Académie du Disque ; they have also been nominated for the Gramophone Award. Dong-Suk Kang teaches at Yonsei University ; he is the artistic director of the Seoul Spring Festival in Korea and of the MusicAlp festival in France. He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Born in St Petersburg, Victor Kissine studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he obtained his master’s and his doctorate. He has composed symphonies, concertos, chamber music, choral and vocal works, two operas, ballets, and film music. Awarded the Irino Prize in Tokyo in 1996 and the Académie de Lutèce prize in Paris in 1993, he was composer in residence of the Musiques Nouvelles ensemble from 1998 to 2000. For many years, he has worked closely with the Kremerata Baltica orchestra and Gidon Kremer. His orchestral works have been played by, among others, the Belgian National Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin, the Staatsorchester Stuttgart, the San Francisco Symphony, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, and the St Petersburg Philharmonic. His discography includes three discs on the ECM label, one of which was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for the recording of his Second Piano Trio by Gidon Kremer, Khatia Buniatishvili, and Giedre Dirvanauskaite. In 2012, he composed the compulsory work for the semi-final of the Queen Elisabeth Competition for violin: Caprice. In 2008, Victor Kissine was elected to the Académie Royale de Belgique.

Jaime Laredo has had a distinguished career, spanning more than fifty years, as a soloist, orchestral conductor, and chamber musician. His musical personality was strongly influenced by his experience as a pupil of musicians such as J. Gingold, P. Casals, I. Galamian, and G. Szell. His First Prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition, at the age of 17, launched his international career ; since then, he has appeared, as a soloist and as a conductor, with the world’s greatest orchestras. He has worked with conductors such as D. Barenboim, Z. Mehta, S. Ozawa, L. Slatkin, C. Davis, E. Ormandy, L. Stokowski, and G. Szell. He has also performed regularly as a member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and alongside his wife, the cellist Sharon Robinson. Jaime Laredo has recorded almost 100 discs, a number of which have won awards : his recording of the Brahms piano quartets with his regular partners Emmanuel Ax, Isaac Stern, and Yo-Yo Ma, for example, won a Grammy Award. Having previously taught at the Curtis Institute of Music and at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, he now teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Jaime Laredo is Music Director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Westchester Philharmonic. He and his wife are the Artistic Directors of the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati.

Shirly Laub studied with Clemens Quatacker at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels and with Viktor Liberman and Philippe Hirshhorn in Utrecht. In 1997 she was awarded the title of ‘Jeune Soliste des communautés des radios publiques de langue française’ and in 2001 received a Juventus award from the Council of Europe. That same year she joined the New York-based Silk Road Ensemble, in which she played chamber music with cellist Yo-Yo Ma throughout the world. She has made recordings of music for violin and piano duo and of chamber music and as first violinist for various radio stations, including Musiq’3, Klara, Concertzender, Radio Classique France, Suisse Romande, Radio Canada, RAI, and the BBC, and on the Explicit! and Fuga Libera labels. As a solo violinist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London, from 1998 to 2005, she was regularly invited to perform as concertmaster at the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), in the BBC orchestras, and in the leading Belgian symphony orchestras, as well as in France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Korea. Concerts as a soloist and chamber musician - for the most part as first violin of Oxalys and in TrioFenix - have seen her perform in the world’s most prestigious concert halls. She also teaches the violin at the Royal Brussels Conservatory.

Mihaela Martin was born in Romania and has won many prizes at international competitions. After winning 2nd Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition at the age of 19, she also distinguished herself at the Montreal, Sion, and Queen Elisabeth competitions. Her 1st Prize at the Indianapolis Competition opened the way to a distinguished international career. Her debut at Carnegie Hall was enthusiastically received. Since then, Mihaela Martin has made a name for herself as a soloist with a vast repertoire and has been the guest of many orchestras. She has performed with the BBC Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Salzburg Mozarteum, and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester under such conductors as K. Masur, N. Harnoncourt, C. Dutoit, and N. Järvi. She also regularly performs at chamber music festivals with a variety of partners, including M. Argerich, Y. Bashmet, E. Leonskaya, N. Imai, L. Fleisher, and M. Pressler. In 2003 Mihaela Martin set up the Michelangelo String Quartet. A regular jury member at the Indianapolis, Enescu, and Tchaikovsky competitions, she teaches at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, the Kronberg Academy and the Barenboim-Said Akademie of Berlin, and also was a professor at the Haute École de Musique in Geneva.

Since making her debut with the New York Philharmonic at the age of eleven, 32 years ago, the violinist Midori has established a reputation as a musician committed to innovative projects. She has founded four projects that aim to make the arts more accessible: Midori & Friends, Partners in Performance, the Orchestra Residencies Program, and Music Sharing. Appointed a Messenger of Peace by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2007, she established Music Sharings’s International Community Engagement Program, in which young artists can balance the joys and demands of a high-level career with a commitment to the idea that music can change people’s lives. Midori has recorded DoReMi¸ a violin concerto written for her by Peter Eötvös, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by the composer. She won a Grammy Award in 2013 for her recording of the Hindemith concerto with the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach. While continuing to perform frequently, Midori held the Jascha Heifetz Chair at the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California until 2018. She is currently an Honorary Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and is also on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music.

Natalia Prischepenko was born into a family of musicians in Siberia. At the age of seven, she began to learn the violin, taught by her mother, who is still her closest adviser. In 1989, she moved to the Musikhochschule in Lübeck, where she finished her studies under David Geringas. She won the Paganini Competition in 1990 and the Tokyo Violin Competition in 1992. The following year, she was a laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Competition. Encounters with artists such as W. Levin, A. Brendel, and the members of the Juilliard String Quartet, the Alban Berg Quartett, and the Emerson Quartet introduced Natalia Prischepenko to the world of chamber music. From 1994 to 2012, she was a member of the renowned Artemis Quartet, with which she won the ARD and Paolo Borciani competitions and made recordings of the Beethoven quartets that won the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros. She has also had fruitful contact with composers such as G. Kurtág, J. Widmann, L. Nono, and G. Ligeti and with artists such as S. Meyer, E. Leonskaja, J. Banse, L.O. Andsnes, T. Mørk, T. Kakuska, and V. Erben. A professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden, she regularly gives masterclasses. She has made many recordings for Virgin Classics/EMI, for which she has received awards such as the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’Or, and the ECHO Klassik.

Born in 1971 in Novosibirsk, Vadim Repin began playing the violin at the age of five and made his first public appearance just six months later. He gave his first concert with an orchestra at the age of seven and made his St Petersburg debut at eleven. In 1989, he became known internationally as the youngest winner of the Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition. The highlights of his career include tours with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, the NHK Orchestra and Charles Dutoit, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski, as well as the violin concerto dedicated to him by Sir James MacMillan, which he played all over the world before recording it on the Onyx Classics label. Vadim Repin has also recorded for other labels, including Warner Classics and Deutsche Grammophon, and won an ECHO Klassic award for his trio with Mischa Maisky and Lang Lang and a BBC Music Award for his collaboration with Nikolai Lugansky. In 2010, he was awarded a Victoire d’Honneur in France at the Victoires de la Musique Classique and was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres. Vadim Repin is an Honorary Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The Trans-Siberian Arts Festival, of which he has been artistic director since 2014, takes place every year in his native region.

Born into a family of musicians, Arabella Steinbacher began learning the violin at the age of three, before going on to study under Ana Chumachenco at the Munich Academy. She was also taught by Ivry Gitlis. She plays regularly with top orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. She has worked with outstanding conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Christoph van Dohnányi, Riccardo Chailly, Herbert Blomstedt, Zubin Mehta, Christoph Eschenbach, Charles Dutoit, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Thomas Hengelbrock. Since 2009, Arabella Steinbacher has recorded exclusively for the Pentatone Classics label. Her latest recording, with the WDR Sinfonieorchester and Lawrence Foster, contains works by Richard Strauss. The many prizes and distinctions with which she has been honoured include two ECHO Klassik awards. As an ambassador for CARE, she works to support people in need. In December 2011, she undertook a tour in Japan in response to the tsunami that had taken place earlier that year. The DVD Arabella Steinbacher - Music of Hope, which retraces her journey and the concerts she gave for young people, was released soon afterwards.