The indisputable winner of the Grand Prix at the 2016 International Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition, Lukáš Vondráček’s 2023/24 season highlights are a tour with Bamberger Symphoniker and Jakub Hrůša in Boston and returns to long term partners such as Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra and Janacáček Philharmonic. Following recent appearances at the Flanders Festival, the Le Piano Symphonique Festival and the Weiwuying International Festival in Taiwan, recital engagements lead him to the Chopin and his Europe Festival in Warsaw and the Piano Loop Festival in Split.

Over the last decade Lukáš Vondráček has travelled the world working with orchestras such as the Philadelphia and Sydney symphony orchestras, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Dresdner Philharmonie, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Oslo and Netherlands philharmonic orchestras under conductors such as Paavo Järvi, Gianandrea Noseda, Jakub Hrůša, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Pietari Inkinen, Vasily Petrenko, Anu Tali, and Stéphane Denève, among many others. Recitals have led him to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Flagey in Brussels, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wiener Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and to renowned festivals such as Menuhin Festival Gstaad, PianoEspoo in Finland, Prague Spring Festival and Lille Piano Festival.

At the age of four Lukáš Vondráček made his first public appearance. As a fifteen-year-old in 2002 he made his debut with Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy which was followed by a major US tour in 2003. His natural and assured musicality and remarkable technique have long marked him out as a gifted and mature musician. He has achieved worldwide recognition by receiving many international awards, foremost first prizes at the Hilton Head and San Marino International Piano Competitions and Unisa International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as the Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award at the 2009 International Van Cliburn Piano Competition.

After finishing his studies at the Academy of Music in Katowice and the Vienna Conservatoire, Lukáš Vondráček obtained an Artist Diploma from Boston’s New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Hung-Kuan Chen, graduating with honours in 2012.

ALEXANDRA DARIESCU

Alexandra Dariescu, creator of “The Nutcracker and I”, is a pianist for the 21st century, standing out as an original voice on gender equality in both her concerto and recital programmes, championing and premiering lesser-known works. In demand as a soloist worldwide, she has performed with eminent orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Oslo Philharmonic and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, whilst the list of conductors she has worked with includes Adam Fischer, Cristian Măcelaru, Alain Altinoglu, Fabien Gabel, Jun Märkl, Vasily Petrenko, Ryan Bancroft, James Gaffigan and JoAnn Falletta.In 2023/24 Dariescu opens the season for the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Sakari Oramo at the Barbican Centre. A regular guest of the George Enescu International Festival, she returns alongside pianist Jean Efflam Bavouzet and the Manchester Camerata for Mozart’s double concerto. In North America she debuts with the Indianapolis Symphony and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, followed by her return to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for the world premiere of James Lee III’s new piano concerto ‘Shades of Unbroken Dreams’, in honour of the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream” speech. The concerto, written for Dariescu, is a co-commission along with the BBC Philharmonic and Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, giving the piece’s UK premiere under the baton of John Storgårds. Further highlights include her return to the Houston Symphony with Fabien Gabel and debuts with the Copenhagen Philharmonic, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, the Trondheim and Wuppertal Symphony orchestras. This season marks the 7th running year of her successful piano recital production “The Nutcracker and I”, with presentations taking place in cities across the UK, Germany, Belgium and China.

In recent seasons Dariescu has given important premieres of unjustly neglected pieces, such as Nadia Boulanger’s Fantaisie Variée; in the US with Houston Symphony, in Norway with Oslo Philharmonic and in Finland with Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2022 she made the world premiere recording of a newly discovered piano concerto (1900) by Leokadiya Kashperova with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for BBC Radio 3’s acclaimed programme ‘Composer of the Week’. Further discoveries include international performances of the recently unearthed piano concerto by George Enescu and Dora Pejačević’s Phantasie concertante.

In 2017, Dariescu took the world by storm with her successful piano recital production “The Nutcracker and I”, an original ground-breaking multimedia performance for piano solo with dance and digital animation, which has since enjoyed international acclaim and has drawn thousands of young audiences into concert halls across Europe, Australia, China, the Emirates and the US, realising Dariescu’s vision of building bridges and making classical music more accessible to the wider public.

Dariescu has released eight albums to critical acclaim, the latest disc being her Decca recording with Angela Gheorghiu. The discography includes a Trilogy of Preludes series on Champs Hill Records, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Darrell Ang (Signum Records), in addition to “The Nutcracker and I” audio book.

Dariescu has been mentored by Sir András Schiff and Dame Imogen Cooper. A Laureate at the Verbier Festival Academy, she received the UK’s Women of the Future Award in the Arts and Culture category. In 2017, Dariescu was appointed patron of Music in Lyddington and Cultural Ambassador of Romania. In spring 2018, Dariescu received the ‘Officer of the Romanian Crown’ from the Royal Family and was selected as a Young European Leader by Friends of Europe. In 2020, Dariescu received the Order ‘Cultural Merit’ in the rank of Knight by the Romanian President and became an Associated Member of the RNCM.

JEAN-EFFLAM BAVOUZET

Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with The Cleveland, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and collaborates with many renowned conductors including Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François-Xavier Roth, Vasily Petrenko, Ludovic Morlot, Edward Gardner, Louis Langrée, and Sir Andrew Davis.

Engagements during the 2023/24 season include Les Siècles under Francois Xavier-Roth, performing both Ravel concerti with Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, as well as Kyoto Symphony Orchestra under Junichi Hirokami with Bartók’s fiendish Piano Concerto No.2. He also appears with Manchester Camerata at the Enescu Festival in Romania with Gábor Takacs-Nagy and will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 with Karol Szymanowski Filharmonia in Kraków, under the baton of Antoni Wit.

In recital, Bavouzet continues his three-year residency at Wigmore Hall, titled ‘Autour de Debussy’, which includes solo recitals and chamber appearances with Steven Isserlis, Quatuor Danel and Orsino Ensemble among others. His solo recital at Wigmore Hall in February shall consist of a unique pairing of Debussy, Liszt and Massenet, a programme which he shall also be taking to Sage Gateshead, SJE Oxford and Hamamatsu in Japan.

Other recitals include a Rachmaninov-centred two-piano performance with the Chamber Music Society at New York’s Lincoln Centre.

Bavouzet’s previous notable performances include Carnegie Hall with London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and a BBC Proms appearance with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicholas Collon. He has recently appeared with Budapest Festival Orchestra, Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, play-directed a three concerto programme with Seattle Symphony Orchestra and toured the Baltics with Manchester Camerata. Bavouzet is a frequent guest of the Verbier festival, at which he has also been interviewed several times. In summer 2023, Bavouzet successfully completed a recital tour, performing at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, Bravo! Vail Festival and Aspen, finishing across the Atlantic at Finland’s Mänttä Music Festival and St Ursanne in Switzerland.

Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos. His most recent release, A Musical Tribute to Pierre Sancan with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier, won the Gramophone Editor’s Choice and Diapason d’Or awards. His complete Haydn Piano Sonatas series has been named a modern benchmark by Gramophone and his The Beethoven Connection received numerous accolades from magazines including the New York Times, BBC Music Magazine and Choc-Classica. Ongoing cycles include the complete Mozart Piano Concertos with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, the fourth volume of which was nominated for a Gramophone Award in 2020. In September of the same year, the complete Beethoven Concertos were released with Swedish Chamber Orchestra play-directed by Bavouzet.

Other recordings include Bartók’s Piano Concerti and the complete Prokofiev Piano Concerti with BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda – the latter won the Concerto category of the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Under Yan-Pascal Tortelier, he recorded Stravinsky’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the Ravel Piano concerti with BBC Symphony Orchestra which won both a Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have also garnered Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’Année awards.

Bavouzet has worked closely with Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zoltan Kocsis, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bruno Mantovani and Jörg Widmann and is also a champion of lesser-known French music, notably that of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard. He is the International Chair in Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music and an Advisory Board member of the Pianofest in the Hamptons. In 2012 he was ICMA Artist of the Year and in 2008 he was awarded Beijing’s first ever Elite Prize for his Beethoven complete sonata series.