French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras is one of the most striking instrumentalists of his generation, prized for his absolute humility and devotion to the musical work. He appears as soloist with some of the foremost orchestras of the world including the Philharmonia of London, L’Orchestre de Paris, the Tokyo Symphony, and the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zürich, working with conductors Leonard Slatkin, Iván Fischer, Philippe Herreweghe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Roger Norrington among others. His discography is extensive, with works ranging from Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven through Schubert, Schumann, Dvořák, and Tchaikovsky all the way to Britten and Ligeti. In 2004 he recorded Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor under Jiří Bělohlávek. His compact discs have won many honours including the prestigious Diapason d’Or. He plays a precious instrument from 1696 by Gioffredo Cappa.

The Czech Philharmonic is the foremost Czech orchestra and has long held a place among the most esteemed representatives of Czech culture on the international scene. The beginning of its rich history is linked to the name of Antonín Dvořák, who on 4 January 1896 conducted the ensemble’s inaugural concert. Although the orchestra performs a broad range of the basic international repertoire, it is sought out most often for its superb interpretations of works by the Czech classics, in a tradition built by excellent conductors like Václav Talich, Rafael Kubelík, Karel Ančerl, and Václav Neumann. The ensemble has won many international honours for its recordings, the first of which it made already in 1929: Smetana’s My Country with Talich. In 2008 the prestigious magazine Gramophone ranked it among the twenty best orchestras of the world. Since the inception of the Dvořák Prague Festival the Czech Philharmonic has been its resident orchestra.