CHINA STAGE

Dan Zhu, violin, one of the leading international artists of his generation, has performed with renowned orchestras under conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Zubin Mehta, Krzysztof Penderecki, Philippe Entremont, Jacek Kaspszyk, Uroš Lajovic, and Muhai Tang, among others. He has been invited to perform at many prestigious festivals, among which stand out Salzburg Festspiele, Tanglewood, Enescu, and the Verbier Festival. Dan Zhu is a laureate of numerous international competitions, including the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, the Concours de Montréal, the Sendai Competition in Japan, and the China International Violin Competition. As an active chamber musician, he has collaborated with renowned artists such as Philippe Entremont, Peter Frankl, Lang Fissile, Joshua Bell, Mischa Maisky, and many others. At the age of twelve, Dan Zhu enrolled at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and then at the Mannes College of Music in New York. He made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of eighteen, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Dan Zhu has released several CDs for labels such as BIS, Cascavelle, Naxos, and ORF. He has been invited to hold master classes at the Sibelius Academy, Princeton University, and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. In 2021, Dan Zhu founded the Etruscan Bloom Festival in Florence and since then has served as its Artistic Director. He is also a dedicated member of the Nature Conservancy and the Antarctic Forum in support of the environmental protection, have been on three expedition trips to the Antarctica, and the first violinist in the history performed on the continent in 2013.

Michel Dalberto, piano, made his first public performance at the tender age of five, while at the age of thirteen he became a student of the famous pedagogue Vladislas Perlemuter at the Paris Conservatory. Today he is considered one of the key followers of the great French piano school founded by Alfred Cortot. Michel Dalberto is the winner some of the most prestigious piano competitions – Clara Haskil (1975) and the Leeds International Piano Competition. He has collaborated with prominent conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Sir Colin Davis, Erich Leinsdorf, Yuri Temirkanov, Kurt Masur, and many others. His repertoire is mostly focused on the Austrian and German music of the 18th, 19^th, and 20th centuries, primarily Schubert and Mozart. Michel Dalberto is the only living pianist who has recorded Schubert’s complete piano oeuvre. In 2018, the Warner label included his early recordings from the 1980s, featuring works by Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann, in a series of seventeen CDs called The Making of a Musician. Since 2011, he has been served as a Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory and a visiting professor at the Tianjin Conservatory. The French government awarded him the Ordre National du Mérite in 1996.