Gautier Capuçon is considered one of the foremost cellists of his generation. Born in 1981 in Chambéry, France, he took to music at the age of five. He studied violoncello at the Paris Conservatory of Music and Dance and later with Austrian cellist and conductor Heinrich Schiff in Vienna. He has won prestigious awards at numerous international competitions, including the André Navarra International Cello Competition, and has performed on leading concert stages collaborating with many renowned conductors (John Eliot Gardiner, Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev) and orchestras (Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig). Gautier Capuçon also performs chamber music, often with his brother Renaud (violin). This will not be the first time that Capuçon has taken part in Dvořákova Praha. In 2009, he performed Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor to great acclaim and in 2012 he participated in the performance of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.

The Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich is one of the oldest orchestras in Europe and has for a very long time ranked among the leading ensembles on the international scene. The orchestra’s rich history reaches back to 1868 and over the years numerous prominent names have served as its chief conductor (such as Rudolf Kempe, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach and David Zinman). The orchestra currently comprises of more than one hundred musicians from 20 countries around the world and every season it performs several dozen concerts both at home and abroad. The ensemble regularly collaborates with soloists who rank among the absolute best on today’s musical interpretation scene: Joshua Bell, Alfred Brendel, Julia Fischer, Hélène Grimaud, Gidon Kremer, Radu Lupu, Yo-Yo Ma, Maria João Pires and many others. The orchestra is also intensively devoted to recording. Its discography extends to more than 40 titles. Since the 2014/2015 season, the chief conductor has been Lionel Bringuier.

Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili is one of the most respected soloists of the younger generation. She comes from a musical family and has played the violin since the age of four. Her father, also a violinist, was her first teacher. She went on to study at the University of Music and Theatre Hamburg (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg). At 16 years of age, she was named as a laureate of the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki, Finland. Other prestigious awards in subsequent years followed, such as the ECHO Klassik Award and the MIDEM Classical Award. Lisa Batiashvili performs with some of the world’s leading orchestras (Berlin Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and others) and conductors (Daniel Barenboim, Antonio Pappano, Christian Thielemann, and others). She records exclusively with the prestigious classical record label Deutsche Grammophon. Her discography includes works by Johannes Brahms, Dmitri Shostakovich, Johann Sebastian Bach and other composers. She plays a Joseph Guarneri 'del Gesù' violin made in 1739.

Born in 1986 in Nice, France, Lionel Bringuier commenced his conducting studies at the Paris Conservatory of Music and Dance (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris) at the age of 13. Despite his relative youth, he has already accumulated a remarkable wealth of conducting experience and success. He was a resident conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for six years and he has repeatedly conducted numerous leading American and European orchestras (Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Bamberger Symphoniker, BBC Symphony Orchestra). He was the chief conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León from 2009 to 2012. Bringuier is a great proponent of contemporary music and has conducted the world premieres of numerous works by contemporary authors (Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bruno Mantovani, Philippe Fénelon, Eric Tanguy, and others).