Kian Soltani © Holger Hage / Deutsche Grammophon

Hailed by The Times as a “remarkable cellist” and described by Gramophone as “sheer perfection”, Kian Soltani’s playing is characterised by a depth of expression, sense of individuality and technical mastery, alongside a charismatic stage presence and ability to create an immediate emotional connection with his audience. He is now invited by the world’s leading orchestras, conductors and recital promoters, propelling him from rising star to one of the most talked about cellists performing today.

In the 24/25 season, Kian Soltani makes several returns including with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Lahav Shani, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Cello Biënnale in Amsterdam and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; he will make his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. As a recitalist, he will join forces once again with Benjamin Grosvenor, Hyeyoon Park, and Timothy Ridout for a quartet tour and will also embark on several trio concerts with Renaud Capuçon and Mao Fujita across the season. In celebration of the Vienna Symphony’s 125th anniversary, he will tour Austria with the orchestra, performing the world premiere of Marcus Nigsch’s concerto written for him. He will also tour with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in Asia as well as with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin across Europe.

His recent orchestral highlights include his residency in 23/24 with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich and concerts with the NDR Elbphilharmonieorchester, Berlin Staatskapelle, WDR Cologne, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra and Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. As a recitalist he continues to appear in prestigious halls and series including at the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin; Wigmore Hall, London; Musikverein and Konzerthaus Vienna and he appears regularly at festivals such as Verbier, Rheingau, Dvorak Prague Festival, Bregenzer Festspiele, Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Grafenegg, Kissinger Sommer and many others.

In 2017, Soltani signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon and his first disc ‘Home’, comprising works for cello and piano by Schubert, Schumann and Reza Vali, was released to international acclaim in 2018, with Gramophone describing the recording as “sublime”. Soltani has since recorded discs including the Dvorak and Tchaikovsky Piano Trios with Lahav Shani and Renaud Capucon, recorded live at Aix Easter Festival in 2018 released by Warner Classics and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim in August 2020.

He recently won Innovative Listening Experience Award at the coveted Opus Klassic Awards 2022, Germany’s most prestigious classical music prize which honours outstanding artists and recordings, for his ‘Cello Unlimited’ album released back in October 2021. He has worked on this latest disc with Deutsche Grammophon during the entirety of 2020, and it is a celebration of the cello and film music. Of the disc, Soltani wrote “Everything you will hear on this album is made only and exclusively with my cello and played only by me. The possibilities of this instrument are unlimited and infinite, and this album is a celebration of the instrument and of epic film music as well”.

Born in Bregenz, Austria, in 1992 to a family of Persian musicians, Soltani began playing the cello at age four and was only twelve when he joined Ivan Monighetti’s class at the Basel Music Academy. He was chosen as an Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation scholarship holder in 2014 and completed his further studies as a member of the Young Soloist Programme at Germany’s Kronberg Academy. He received additional important musical training at the International Music Academy in Liechtenstein. As of October 2023, he holds position as a professor of cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria.

Soltani attracted worldwide attention in April 2013 as winner of the International Paulo Cello Competition in Helsinki. In February 2017 Soltani won Germany’s celebrated Leonard Bernstein Award and in December 2017, he was awarded the prestigious Credit Suisse Young Artist Award.

Kian Soltani plays “The London, ex Boccherini" Antonio Stradivari cello, kindly loaned to him by a generous sponsor through the Beares International Violin Society.

SEASON 2024/2025 - THIS BIOGRAPHY IS AVAILABLE BY COURTESY OF ASKONAS HOLT

Fazıl Say © Marco Borggreve

With his extraordinary pianistic ability, Fazıl Say has been touching audiences and critics alike for almost 30 years in a way that has become rare. Concerts with this artist are different concerts; they are more direct, more open, more exciting. In short: they go straight to the heart. This is what the composer Aribert Reimann must have meant when, during a visit to Ankara in 1986, he had the pleasure, more or less by chance, of hearing the then 16-year-old. He immediately asked his companion, the American pianist David Levine, to come to the conservatoire in the Turkish capital, and he did so with the words that have since become commonplace: "You have to listen to him, the boy plays like a devil".

Fazıl Say received his first piano lessons from Mithat Fenmen, a pianist who had studied with Alfred Cortot in Paris. Fenmen – perhaps sensing how great the boy's talent was – asked his pupil to first improvise every day on everyday themes before engaging in the necessary piano exercises and studies. It was in this engagement with free creative processes and forms that the origin was laid for the enormous improvisational talent and aesthetic outlook that forms the core of pianist and composer Fazıl Say's self-image. As a composer, Fazıl Say has been commissioned by Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the BBC, Salzburger Festspiele, WDR, Münchner Philharmoniker, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Wiener Konzerthaus, Dresdner Philharmonie, Fondation Louis Vuitton, among others. His Oeuvre includes six symphonies, two oratorios, various solo concertos and numerous piano and chamber music works.

Fazıl Say received his fine-tuning as a classical pianist from 1987 onwards with David Levine, first at the Musikhochschule "Robert Schumann" in Düsseldorf, and later in Berlin. In addition, he regularly attended master classes with Menahem Pressler. Moreover, his outstanding technique soon enabled him to master the so-called war horses of world literature with astonishing aplomb, and it was precisely this mixture of subtlety in Haydn, Bach and Mozart, and virtuoso brilliance in the works of Liszt, Mussorgsky or Beethoven that finally led to his victory at the International “Young Concert Artists” Competition in New York in 1994. Fazıl Say has subsequently performed with all the renowned American and European orchestras and numerous great conductors, developing a diverse repertoire ranging from compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach to the "classics" Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Romantic and contemporary music, including his own compositions for piano.

Since then, Fazıl Say has given guest performances in countless countries on all five continents; the French newspaper "Le Figaro" described him as "a genius". In the process, Fazıl Say has also appeared numerous times as a chamber musician. With violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, for example, he has performed in a fantastic duo for years; other prominent partners have included Maxim Vengerov, the Minetti Quartett, the Modigliani Quartett, Nicolas Altstaedt and Marianne Crebassa.

Numerous concert halls, orchestras and festivals have invited Fazıl Say as artist in residence or introduced him to their audiences with portraits and focus weeks over the past decades. These include, among others, Konzerthaus Dortmund, Konzerthaus Berlin, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Wiener Konzerthaus, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Zürcher Kammerorchester, Dresdner Philharmonie, Camerata Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, Bodenseefestival and Festival der Nationen. Further portraits were heard in Paris, Tokyo, Merano, Hamburg and Say's hometown Istanbul. In the 2023/24 season, he was Spotlight Artist at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Composer in Focus at the GAIDA Festival in Vilnius and the Hessischer Rundfunk dedicated a portrait week to him in December 2023.

In 2013, Fazıl Say received the Rheingau Music Prize, and in December 2016, the International Beethoven Prize for Human Rights, Peace, Freedom, Poverty Alleviation and Inclusion in Bonn. In autumn 2017, he was awarded the Music Prize of the City of Duisburg.

Fazıl Say's recordings of works by Bach, Mozart, Gershwin and Stravinsky on Teldec Classics as well as Mussorgsky, Beethoven and his own works on naïve have been critically acclaimed and have received several awards, including three ECHO KLASSIK awards. In 2014, his recording of works by Beethoven – the Piano Concerto No. 3 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt under Gianandrea Noseda, the Sonata op. 111 and the Moonlight Sonata – as well as the album "Say plays Say" with exclusively his own works were released. In autumn 2016, Warner Classics released the recording of all Mozart sonatas, for which Fazıl Say received his fourth ECHO KLASSIK in 2017. In 2017, together with Nicolas Altstaedt, he recorded the album "4 Cities". In autumn 2017, Warner Classics released ‘Nocturnes’ and the album "Secrets" with Marianne Crebassa which won the Gramophone Classical Music Award in 2018. His 2018 album is dedicated to Debussy. In January 2020, Fazıl Say's recording of all Beethoven piano sonatas was released by Warner Classics and Bach's Goldberg Variations followed in November 2022. In January 2023, together with Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Fazıl Say released a recording of sonatas by Bartók, Janáček and Brahms (Alpha). He continues to record his own works under his label ACM.

SEASON 2024/2025