The pianist Ivo Kahánek is one of today’s most successful Czech performers. After graduating from the Janáček Conservatoire in Ostrava and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, he furthered his education at London’s famed Guildhall School and at a number of masterclasses. At the age of 25, he became the overall winner of the Prague Spring International Music Competition. Besides giving solo recitals, he appears with renowned orchestras (Czech Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne) and conductors (Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pinchas Steinberg, Jiří Bělohlávek). In 2007 at London’s famed BBC Proms, he performed the Piano Concerto No. 4 (“Incantation”) by Bohuslav Martinů. In November 2014 he became just the second Czech pianist in history (after Rudolf Firkušný) to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic. Sir Simon Rattle conducted the performance. He has a number of acclaimed recordings to his credit with the music of Frédéric Chopin and Leoš Janáček among other composers. His CD from last year with piano concertos by Dvořák and Martinů has been awarded this year by the prestigious British music journal BBC Music Magazine as the Recording of the Year in the Concerto category.

The Orchestra was founded in 1945 by the Swiss conductor Edmond de Stoutz who led it for more than half a century until 1996, building it into an ensemble of international renown. The orchestra's home is the famous Tonhalle in Zürich. Outside the Swiss metropolis, where it gives about forty concerts each year, it appears regularly in many prestigious European musical centres, makes recordings, and works with soloists some of whom operate outside the bounds of classical music, for instance in jazz and folk music. Another important activity of the orchestra is support of young musicians and educational-popularizing work focused on potential new audience members; for example it gives concerts for 'children of all ages'. Since 2011 the chief conductor has been Sir Roger Norrington, a leading representative of 'historically-informed' performance of early music, but the orchestra's repertoire is much broader, comprising numerous works from the Baroque up to the present time. Starting with the 2016-17 season Mr. Norrington will be succeeded by Daniel Hope. The core of the orchestra is formed by twenty-two string players, supplemented by wind and percussion instruments as needed.

The British violinist Daniel Hope was born in 1973 in South Africa to the family of the poet and prose writer Christopher Hope. While still a child he moved with his parents to London where he studied with Yehudi Menuhin. In 2002 he became a member of the famous Beaux Arts Trio, in which he remained until that ensemble disbanded in 2008. Since 2011 he has served as a professor of violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Five times he has been honoured with a prestigious Echo Klassik award, in 2006 as Instrumentalist of the Year. In 2013 he was the main actor in the documentary film The Secrets of the Violin, mapping the history of the making of this instrument from Stradivari to the present time. Hope's discography includes more than twenty compact discs featuring music by Bach, Mozart, and Mendelssohn but also rarely-performed composers like Foulds, Ireland, Korngold, and Waxman; since 2007 he has been recording exclusively for the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label. Starting with the 2016-17 season he will serve as artistic director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and in this year's Dvořák Prague Festival he is curator of the chamber series.