Julia Fischer is one of the leading violinists to have emerged at the turn of the twenty first century. Although she began gaining notice with competition prizes and concert appearances from 1995, she achieved international renown for her 2003 New York appearances with conductor Lorin Maazel at both Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.

Fischer was born in 1983, in Munich, Germany. She began taking lessons on the violin at age 3 from Helge Thelen, and at 4 began simultaneous studies on the piano with her mother, Viera Fischer, a talented amateur pianist. Young Julia's first advanced studies on the violin came a few years later in Augsburg, at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory; at 9, she began taking instruction at the Munich Academy of Music. Among her most important teachers there has been violin virtuoso Ana Chumachenco.

In 1995 Fischer won first prize at the International Yehudi Menuhin Competition, where she also captured a special prize for best performance of a J.S. Bach solo work. The following year, in Lisbon, she won first prize at the Eurovision Competition for Young Instrumentalists, an event broadcast widely throughout Europe. Other important prizes followed as Fischer steadily developed her career as an orchestral soloist and recitalist.

She gave regular concerts with major symphony orchestras beginning in the late '90s in both Europe and the United States. 2003 was a pivotal year in her career: in the aforementioned concerts with Lorin Maazel, where she played the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall and the Brahms Double Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and cellist Han-Na Chang at Carnegie Hall, she convincingly established her credentials as one of the most talented violinists of her generation.

Thereafter, she made concert tours with many of the world's finest orchestras, including the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (under Neville Marriner), the Gewandhaus Orchestra (Herbert Blomstedt), and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Her first major recording was a 2001 DVD of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, with Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. In 2004 she began recording exclusively for PentaTone Classics, her first disc featuring performances of the Prokofiev First Violin Concerto, as well as Khachaturian and Glazunov concertos. Subsequent recordings included a disc of solo works by J.S. Bach, Brahms' chamber music, violin concerto and Double Concerto, and the Mozart Violin Concertos.

Touring keeps Fischer busy, with dates in Europe and the U.S. during 2010-2011, including recitals with pianist Milana Chernyavska and also with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski.

Fischer has played many violins on loan, including a Ventapane, a Gagliano, a Testore, a Guarneri del Gesu, and a Stradivarius, though she owns a 1742 Guadagnini, which she purchased in London in 2004, and a 2011 violin by Philipp Augustin, which she has played since 2012.

The first independent orchestra in Russia since Czarist days, the Russian National Orchestra has maintained a high international profile. In 2004, it became the first Russian orchestra to win a Grammy award.

The Russian National Orchestra was founded in 1990 during the period of perestroika or openness that preceded the fall of the Soviet Union. All other orchestras in the country since the advent of Communism had been state-owned. The orchestra's founder was pianist and conductor Mikhail Pletnev, who conducted the group in its early years. He offered players an atmosphere of artistic freedom and an actual financial stake in the orchestra, and top players began to flock to the group from state ensembles. The orchestra was successful from the beginning, and it attracted financial support from corporations and foundations both within and outside Russia. Violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov became the group's music director in 1999; Pletnev has remained active with the orchestra, and it has a large roster of guest conductors. The Russian National Orchestra often appears at its home base, the Zaryadye Concert Hall in Moscow, but it is notable for the depth and frequency of its international touring. The orchestra was the first Russian group to appear at the Vatican, and it toured Israel. The orchestra has made multiple tours of Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and it has appeared at the BBC Proms in London and other major festivals. It has been heard on broadcasts on both Russia's Kultura program and National Public Radio in the U.S. The Russian National Orchestra maintains two foundations, Cultural Allies sponsors exchanges between Russia and the U.S., while Magic of Music organizes concerts in Russian orphanages.

The Russian National Orchestra is especially notable for its recording career, which began just a year after the group's founding in 1991, with a critically acclaimed performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 ("Pathétique"). The orchestra signed with the Deutsche Grammophon label in 1993 and remained there until 2009, issuing mostly, but not exclusively, Russian music; Pletnev led the orchestra in a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies released in 2007. In the 2010s, the orchestra has recorded mostly for PentaTone Classics, issuing a half-dozen albums or more in several years. A 2003 recording of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf featured speaking parts from former U.S. president Bill Clinton and former Soviet prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev; the record earned a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Children and spawned several remakes in other countries. As of 2020, when the orchestra released a recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 ("Babi Yar") under conductor Kirill Karabits, the orchestra's recording catalog comprised well over 50 albums. ~ James Manheim

Yakov Kreizberg was a naturalized American conductor and pianist, born in Russia with the name Yakov Bychkov. A piano prodigy at age 5, he began composing by 13 and took up conducting lessons with Ilya Musin around the same time. When he emigrated to the United States in 1976, he was unable to bring his compositions with him, so out of frustration with Soviet policies, he gave up composing entirely and dedicated himself to conducting full-time.

Once settled in the United States, Kreizberg entered the Mannes College The New School for Music, where he studied with his brother, conductor Semyon Bychkov. (Kreizberg adopted his mother's maiden name shortly after graduation, to differentiate himself from his brother). Following graduate work at the University of Michigan with Gustav Meier, Kreizberg studied with Erich Leinsdorf, Seiji Ozawa, Leonard Bernstein, and Michael Tilson Thomas, becoming the latter's assistant at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. In 1985, he returned to Mannes College to direct the school's orchestra and also conducted the New York City Symphony's concerts.

Having dual careers in conducting orchestral concerts and opera, Kreizberg served as general music director of the United Municipal Theaters of Krefeld-Mönchengladbach and as conductor of the Niederrheinische Sinfoniker. At the Berlin Comic Opera, he oversaw productions of standard repertoire as well as revivals of forgotten operas, and conducted many heavily attended concerts. He went on to conduct operas at Glyndebourne, the Canadian Opera Company, the English National Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, and the Royal Opera House. His concert activities included performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection," to critical acclaim. Additionally, Kreizberg appeared in the United States with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic.

After 2003, Kreizberg was chief conductor and artistic adviser of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, as well as principal guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. He recorded for Decca and PentaTone Classics. Yakov Kreizberg died on March 15, 2011, in Monaco at age 51, following a long illness.