Born in the Czech Republic, Jakub Hrůša is chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, music director designate of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden (music director from 2025), and principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. He was also formerly principal guest conductor of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. He was the 2023 Opus Klassik Conductor of the Year.

He is a frequent guest with many of the world’s greatest orchestras, enjoying close relationships and performing regularly with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, NHK Symphony and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra–and in the US with The Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Symphony Orchestra. 

As a conductor of opera, he has led productions for the Lyric Opera of Chicago (Jenůfa), Salzburg Festival (Kát’aKabanová with the Vienna Philharmonic), Vienna State Opera (The Makropulos Case), Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Carmen and Lohengrin), Opéra National de Paris (Rusalka), and Zurich Opera (The Makropulos Case). He has also been a regular guest with Glyndebourne Festival, conducting Vanessa, The Cunning Little Vixen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Carmen, The Turn of the Screw, Don Giovanni and La bohème, and served as music director of Glyndebourne On Tour for three years. 

His relationships with leading vocal and instrumental soloists have included collaborations in recent seasons with Behzod Abduraimov, Piotr Anderszewski, Leif Ove Andsnes, Emanuel Ax, Lisa Batiashvili, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Rudolf Buchbinder, Renaud Capuçon, Gautier Capuçon, Isabelle Faust, Bernarda Fink, Julia Fischer, Sol Gabetta, Véronique Gens, Christian Gerhaher, Kirill Gerstein, Karen Gomyo, Hélène Grimaud, Augustin Hadelich, Hilary Hahn, Barbara Hannigan, Alina Ibragimova, Steven Isserlis, Janine Jansen, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Leonidas Kavakos, Evgeny Kissin, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Lang Lang, Igor Levit, Karita Mattila, Albrecht Mayer, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Stephanie d’Oustrac, Emmanuel Pahud, Beatrice Rana, Kian Soltani, Josef Špaček, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Antoine Tamestit, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Daniil Trifonov, Mitsuko Uchida, Klaus Florian Vogt, Lukáš Vondráček, Yuja Wang, Alisa Weilerstein, and Frank Peter Zimmermann.

As a recording artist, Jakub Hrusa has received numerous awards and nominations. He was a double winner at the 2024 Gramophone Awards in both the Concerto and Opera categories, for his recordings of Britten’s Violin Concerto with Isabelle Faust and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Kát’a Kabanová with the Vienna Philharmonic at Salzburg Festival. With Bamberg Symphony, he received the ICMA Prize for Symphonic Music in both 2022 and 2023, for his recordings of Rott’s Symphony No. 1 and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4. He was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for his recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, and in 2021 his recording of Martinů and Bartók violin concertos with Frank Peter Zimmermann was nominated for BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone awards, and his disc of the Dvořák Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony and Augustin Hadelich was nominated for a GRAMMY Award. His recordings of Dvořák and Martinů Piano Concertos with Ivo Kahánek and the Bamberg Symphony (Supraphon), and Vanessa from Glyndebourne (Opus Arte) both won BBC Music Magazine Awards in 2020. Other recent releases include Strauss songs with Bamberg Symphony and Kateřina Kněžíková (Supraphon), Dvořák and Brahms Symphonies with Bamberg Symphony (Tudor), Suk’s Asrael Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony (BR Klassik), and Dvořák’s Requiem and Te Deum with the Czech Philharmonic (Decca).

Jakub Hrůša studied conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where his teachers included Jiří Bělohlávek. He is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in 2024 received the Silver Medal of the President of the Czech Senate, its highest award. He was the inaugural recipient of the Sir Charles Mackerras Prize, and has also been awarded the Bavarian Culture Prize, the Czech Academy of Classical Music’s Antonín Dvořák Prize, and–together with Bamberg Symphony–the Bavarian State Prize for Music.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s focus is to get to the heart of the music, to its meaning for us - now and here. With a combination of depth, brilliance and humour, Kopatchinskaja brings an inimitable sense of theatrics to her music. Described by The New York Times "a player of rare expressive energy and disarming informality, of whimsy and theatrical ambition", Kopatchinskaja’s distinctive approach always conveys the core of the work, whether it is with an out-of-the-box performance of a traditional violin repertoire classic or with an original staged project she presents as experimental performance dramaturge.

A boundary-crosser who thrives on the challenge of musical experiments and describes contemporary music as her lifeblood, her absolute priority is the music of the 20th and 21st century and the collaboration with living composers such as Francisco Coll, Luca Francesconi, Michael Hersch, Márton Illés, György Kurtág, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Aureliano Cattaneo, Stefano Gervasoni, and many others. Kopatchinskaja directs staged concerts at venues on both sides of the Atlantic and collaborates with leading orchestras, conductors, and festivals worldwide. Starting from the 2024/25 season, she will serve as the Artistic Partner of the SWR Symphony Orchestra. A virtuoso, storyteller, and all-around phenomenon, her artistic direction will involve designing her own programmes, which will include both established concert formats and innovative theatrical and interdisciplinary approaches. Among these is the staged concert The Peace Project, which reflects on centuries of existential suffering caused by war through a kaleidoscope of baroque and modern works up to the present day. The project addresses the numerous reports from war zones, the violent disruption of daily life, and the constant fear for one's life and loved ones. Kopatchinskaja will also be Artist in Residence at the 2025 Klarafestival, where she will continue to actively support themes related to environmental protection and sustainability in innovatively curated projects. Furthermore, she holds the position of Associated Artist of the SWR Experimentalstudio, one of the most important international research centres in the field of electronic music.

This season, she channels her creative prowess and versatility into performances at La Biennale di Venezia, BBC Proms, Lucerne Festival, and an appearance with the New York Philharmonic. In 2024, Kopatchinskaja is honouring Schönberg's 150th anniversary and performs his monumental Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Wiener Symphoniker, Dresdner Philharmonie, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, to name just a few. A trusted partner of the LPO for a decade, Kopatchinskaja will collaborate with the orchestra and Edward Gardner on an extensive U.S. tour culminating in a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York this autumn. Kopatchinskaja also reunites with Ensemble Resonanz for a new project, playground, to light-footedly deconstruct our familiar world, reassemble it back and lead the audience on an adventure of discovery through boundlessness. The programme features a new double concerto by Dai Fujikura alongside Claire Chase.

In 2023/24, Kopatchinskaja curated large-scale residencies at four prominent concert halls: the Southbank Centre in London, Philharmonie Essen, Wiener Konzerthaus (where she is the youngest honorary member of the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft), and this year's Golden Decade festival at the Dresdner Philharmonie, which featured her performing six major violin works from the Classical Modern era over three consecutive evenings. In a new production directed by Barrie Kosky at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Songs and Fragments, Kopatchinskaja collaborated with soprano Anna Prohaska on György Kurtág's Kafka-Fragments.

Highlights of the previous seasons included residencies at the London Barbican Centre, Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Kopatchinskaja's continued role as artistic partner of Camerata Bern, and a daring musical experiment with Herbert Fritsch - a Neo-Dada opera production Vergeigt at Theater Basel. Following the international success of her previous collaboration with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra - Bye Bye Beethoven - Patricia Kopatchinskaja returned for the premiere performances of a new staged concert with the ensemble - Les Adieux - a project confronting the rapid deterioration of the environment and the loss of the natural world. Kopatchinskaja also performs as a vocal artist in Ligeti’s Mystères du macabre and Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire where she takes on the role of Pierrot himself, as well as her project presenting Kurt Schwitters’ poem Ursonate as a film in the style of Dada.

Kopatchinskaja’s discography includes over 30 recordings, among them GRAMMY award-winning Death and the Maiden with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, a project which was also re-created as a semi-staged filmed performance with Camerata Bern. Recent CD releases season included Les Plaisirs Illuminés with Sol Gabetta and Camerata Bern, which was saluted with a BBC Music Magazine award and Le monde selon George Antheil with Joonas Ahonen (both on Alpha Classics). A revival of the project Maria Mater Meretrix with Anna Prohaska presenting the image of women throughout the centuries in a musical mosaic was also released on CD last season, as well as a new recording with Fazil Say which marks the comeback of their duo and has been awarded Editor's Choice by Gramophone. This season has also seen the release of the album Take 3 with clarinettist Reto Bieri and pianist Polina Leschenko - a testament to the enduring partnership of these three artists, celebrating their shared musical journey and musical origins.