With an alert and critical mind, Igor Levit places his art in the context of social events and understands it as inseparably linked to them. The New York Times describes Igor Levit as one of the “most important artists of his generation.”

In 2023-24, Igor Levit performs in recital at the Musikverein Vienna, Philharmonie Berlin, La Scala Milan, Carnegie Hall New York, London’s Wigmore Hall as well as in Seoul, Tokyo, Paris, Montréal, and Toronto among others. Highlights of Igor Levit’s orchestral season calendar are two cyclic projects – a Bartok cycle with the NDR Elbphilharmonieorchester and Alan Gilbert and a Brahms cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann. Also with the Vienna Philharmonic, Igor Levit joins forces for a European tour (Jakub Hrůša) and during the Mozartwoche in Salzburg (Joana Mallwitz). Further orchestral tours in the 2023/24 season see Igor Levit perform with the Orchestra dell’Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Sir Antonio Pappano as well as the Berliner Barock Solisten. Guest engagements include performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Staatskapelle Berlin with Elim Chan, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Joanna Mallwitz as well as with the New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden. Igor Levit reunites with long-time colleagues and friends, Markus Becker, Renaud Capuçon, and Julia Hagen for trio and duo concerts at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg in Berlin, London, Munich, and Vienna.

After a very successful launch of the Piano Fest in 2023, Igor Levit curates the festival’s second edition in May 2024 in collaboration with the Lucerne Festival. Since the 2022-23 season, Igor Levit is the co-artistic director of the Musikfestival Heidelberger Frühling.

Born in Nizhni Novgorod, Igor Levit moved to Germany with his family at the age of eight. He completed his piano studies in Hannover with the highest score in the history of the institute. His teachers included Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Matti Raekallio, Bernd Goetzke, Lajos Rovatkay, and Hans Leygraf. Igor Levit was the youngest participant in the 2005 International Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, where he won silver, the special prize for chamber music, the audience prize, and the special prize for the best performance of contemporary pieces.

In 2018 Igor Levit has been named the eigth recipient of the prestigious “Gilmore Artist Award” – conferred only every four years to a classical pianist and recognized as the largest and one of the world’s most distinguished music awards. In spring 2019 Igor Levit was appointed professor for piano at his alma mater, the University of Music, Theatre, and Media Hanover. Igor Levit’s 2019 highly acclaimed first recording of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas was awarded the Gramophone Artist of the Year Award as well as the Opus Klassik in autumn 2020. Igor Levit is Musical America’s Recording Artist of the Year 2020. In June 2022 his album On DSCH has been awarded the Recording of the Year Award as well as the Instrumental Award of the BBC Music Magazine. Igor Levit’s new solo album for Sony Classical Fantasia was released in September 2023. In spring 2021 Hanser published Igor Levit’s first book “House Concert,” co-authored by Florian Zinnecker followed in Fall 2022 by the release of the feature documentary Igor Levit – No Fear in cinemas and on DVD.

For his political commitment Igor Levit has been awarded the fifth International Beethoven Prize in 2019 followed by the award of the Statue B of the International Auschwitz Committee in January 2020.

His 53 Twitter-streamed live house concerts during the lockdown in spring 2020 garnered a worldwide audience, offering a sense of community and hope in a time of isolation and desperation. In October 2020 Igor Levit was recognized with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In Berlin, where he makes his home, Igor Levit is playing on a Steinway D Grand Piano kindly given to him by the Trustees of Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells.

Frank Huang joined the New York Philharmonic as Concertmaster, The Charles E. Culpeper Chair, in September 2015. The first prize winner of the 2003 Walter W. Naumburg Foundation’s Violin Competition and the 2000 Hannover International Violin Competition, he has established a major career as a violin virtuoso.

Since performing with the Houston Symphony in a nationally broadcast concert at the age of 11 he has appeared with orchestras throughout the world including The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of Hannover, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, and the Genoa Orchestra. He has also performed on NPR’s Performance Today, ABC’s Good Morning America, and CNN’s American Morning with Paula Zahn. He has performed at Wigmore Hall (London), Salle Cortot (Paris), Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), and Herbst Theatre (San Francisco), as well as a second recital in Alice Tully Hall (New York), which featured the World Premiere of Donald Martino’s Sonata for Solo Violin. Following more than 25 additional solo appearances with the Orchestra, in May 2022 he performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, Turkish, conducted by Music Director Jaap van Zweden.

Huang has had great success in competitions since the age of 15 and received top prizes in the Premio Paganini International Violin Competition and the Indianapolis International Violin Competition. Other honors include Gold Medal Awards in the Kingsville, Irving M. Klein, and D’Angelo international competitions. His first commercial recording — featuring fantasies by Schubert, Ernst, Schoenberg, and Waxman — was released on Naxos in 2003.

In addition to his solo career, Frank Huang is deeply committed to chamber music. He is a member of the New York Philharmonic String Quartet, established in the 2016–17 season, and has performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia’s Steans Institute, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and Caramoor. He frequently participates in Musicians from Marlboro’s tours and was selected by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to be a member of the prestigious CMS Two program. Before joining the Houston Symphony as concertmaster in 2010, he served as first violinist of the GRAMMY Award–winning Ying Quartet and was a faculty member at the Eastman School of Music.

Frank Huang was born in Beijing, China. At seven, he moved to Houston, Texas, where he began violin lessons with his mother. He commenced study with Fredell Lack at the University of Houston and at 16 he enrolled in the pre-college program at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) where he studied with Donald Weilerstein. He continued studies with Weilerstein in college and earned his Bachelor of Music degree from CIM in 2002. He subsequently attended The Juilliard School in New York City, studying violin with Robert Mann. He is an alumnus of the Music Academy of the West. He served on the faculties of The Shepherd School of Music at Rice and the University of Houston, and currently serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School.

Violinist Alina Kobialka joined the New York Philharmonic in 2022. She has been praised for her beautiful tone, effortless precision, and musical maturity beyond her years. Since her first appearance as soloist at age ten, she has toured and performed with many ensembles throughout the world. San Francisco Classical Voice described her as a “jaw-droppingly assured” soloist, who “made present and future converge,” and the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote, “Watch for her name. She appears to be bound for greatness.”

Kobialka began her studies at age five with Li Lin. She continued on to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s preparatory program, where she studied with Wei He. Leaving San Francisco at age 16, she attended the Colburn School’s Music Academy, in Los Angeles, where she studied with Robert Lipsett and Danielle Belen. Most recently, she graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music with her master’s in violin performance, under the tutelage of Ilya Kaler.

At age 14 Kobialka made her solo debut with the San Francisco Symphony at its 100th anniversary reunion concert in Davies Symphony Hall, where she has since returned three times as soloist. Soon after she was featured live on NPR’s nationally acclaimed program From the Top. Since then, she has performed with various American orchestras, including the Las Vegas Philharmonic, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, California Symphony, and Colburn Academy Virtuosi Orchestra.

In 2015 Kobialka made her performance debut in Asia with the Macau Youth Symphony for its New Year’s concert. She returned in 2016 to tour Japan with the Kagawa International Youth Orchestra, and in 2017 to perform in the Shanghai International Arts Festival gala concert.

Kobialka was awarded second prize at the 2017 Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition. Other competition accolades include being named a laureate of the 2016 Irving M. Klein International Competition and receiving the Grand Prize at the Mondavi Center National Young Artists Competition.

Recent concert highlights include performing with world-renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony and making her debut with Vadim Gluzman and the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. She also performed Brahms’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with the California Symphony and made her debut with the Asheville Symphony.

An avid chamber musician, Kobialka has been an artist at the Marlboro Music Festival. During her time there, she had the great honor of performing with acclaimed pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Other celebrated musicians she has worked with include pianist Jonathan Biss, violist Kim Kashkashian, and cellist Peter Wiley.

Cynthia Phelps is the New York Philharmonic’s Principal Viola, The Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Rose Chair. Highlights of her solo appearances with the Orchestra have included the New York Premiere–Philharmonic Co-Commission of Julia Adolphe’s Unearth, Release, in 2016; performances on the 2006 Tour of Italy, sponsored by Generali; Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in 2010 and 2014; and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Two Paths, which the Orchestra commissioned for her and Philharmonic Associate Principal Viola Rebecca Young and which they premiered in 1999 and reprised both on tour and in New York, most recently in 2011. Other solo engagements have included the Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao, and Hong Kong Philharmonic.

Phelps is a member of the New York Philharmonic String Quartet, established in the 2016–17 season, and performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Jupiter Chamber Players, and the Santa Fe, La Jolla, Seattle, Chamber Music Northwest, and Bridgehampton festivals. She has appeared with the Guarneri, Tokyo, Orion, American, Brentano, and Prague Quartets, and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. She has given recitals in the major music capitals of Europe and the U.S. She is also a founding member of the chamber group Les Amies, a flute-harp-viola group with Philharmonic Principal Harp Nancy Allen and flutist Carol Wincenc.

Phelps is a first-prize winner of both the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and the Washington International String Competition and is a recipient of the Pro Musicis International award. Under the auspices of this philanthropic organization, she has appeared as soloist in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Rome, and Paris, as well as in prisons, hospitals, and drug rehabilitation centers worldwide. Her recording Air, for flute, viola, and harp on Arabesque, was nominated for a GRAMMY Award. Her television and radio credits include Live From Lincoln Center on PBS; St. Paul Sunday Morning on NPR; Radio France; Italy’s RAI; and WGBH in Boston. Phelps has served on the faculties at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. She is married to cellist Ronald Thomas.

Carter Brey was appointed Principal Cello, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Chair, of the New York Philharmonic in 1996. He made his official subscription debut with the Orchestra in May 1997 performing Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations under the direction of then Music Director Kurt Masur. He has since appeared as soloist almost every season and was featured during The Bach Variations: A Philharmonic Festival, when he gave two performances of the cycle of all six of Bach’s cello suites. Most recently, he was the soloist in performances of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major at David Geffen Hall in February 2020 and at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in July 2021, with Music Director Jaap van Zweden conducting on both occasions.

He rose to international attention in 1981 as a prizewinner in the Rostropovich International Cello Competition. The winner of the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Prize, Avery Fisher Career Grant, Young Concert Artists’ Michaels Award, and other honors, he also was the first musician to win the Arts Council of America’s Performing Arts Prize.

Brey has appeared as soloist with virtually all the major orchestras in the United States and performed under the batons of prominent conductors including Claudio Abbado, Semyon Bychkov, Sergiu Comissiona, and Christoph von Dohnányi. He is a member of the New York Philharmonic String Quartet, established in the 2016–17 season, and has made regular appearances with the Tokyo and Emerson string quartets, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at festivals such as Spoleto (both in the United States and Italy) and the Santa Fe and La Jolla Chamber Music festivals. He and pianist Christopher O’Riley recorded Le Grand Tango: Music of Latin America, a disc of compositions from South America and Mexico released on Helicon Records.

Carter Brey was educated at the Peabody Institute, where he studied with Laurence Lesser and Stephen Kates, and at Yale University, where he studied with Aldo Parisot and was a Wardwell Fellow and a Houpt Scholar. His violoncello is a rare J.B. Guadagnini made in Milan in 1754. An avid racing and cruising sailor since childhood, he holds a Yachtmaster Offshore rating from the Royal Yachting Association.