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Andreas Ottensamer is primarily a clarinetist, but his competition experience includes prizes for cello and piano also, as well as tennis tournaments. He is a versatile musician who has played chamber music, orchestral music, pop, and jazz.

Born on April 4, 1989, in Vienna and trained as a multi-instrumentalist, Ottensamer took piano lessons at age four and started cello at ten before he settled on the clarinet in 2003, studying with Johann Hindler at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. ("Music was present from the first day of my life before I could even realize what was going on," he told Limelight magazine.) He won awards in major competitions for all of his instruments, and he became the principal clarinetist for the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He was pursuing graduate studies at Harvard University when he was named as a scholar of the Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, in time becoming principal clarinetist with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2011.

As a chamber musician, Ottensamer has performed with Murray Perahia, Janine Jansen, and Yo-Yo Ma, among others, and serves as co-artistic director of the Bürgenstock Festival with pianist José Gallardo. He has performed with his father, Ernst Ottensamer, and his brother, Daniel Ottensamer, in the clarinet trio, The Clarinotts. The group released its eponymous CD on Mercury Classics/Deutsche Grammophon. Andreas has ventured into jazz and pop, accompanying Tori Amos on her album Night of Hunters (2011).

Ottensamer made his solo debut with Portraits: The Clarinet Album in 2013 on the Deutsche Grammophon label, which, to his surprise, had sought him out. Featuring concertos by Copland, Spohr, and Cimarosa (as well as Gershwin's Preludes arranged for clarinet), the album made no bid for crossover success, and Ottensamer continued to explore unusual programming concepts on subsequent releases. His 2015 album Brahms: The Hungarian Connection brought to light Hungarian influences, even in such an absolute work as the Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115. That album earned Ottensamer Echo Klassik's Instrumentalist of the Year award in Germany. Ottensamer moved to Decca for his 2017 release New Era, featuring clarinet works by members of the Mannheim school who brought the instrument to prominence in the orchestra. He returned to Deutsche Grammophon in 2019 for the album Blue Hour, and in 2022, he was heard with cellist Gautier Capuçon and pianist Yuja Wang on a recording of Brahms' Clarinet Trio, Op. 114. ~ Blair Sanderson & James Manheim

Brilliant and charismatic pianist Yuja Wang is among the most prominent pianists in the world, becoming a star by age 21 and building a consistently growing career since then. Russian virtuoso music is at the center of Wang's repertory, but she has expanded into new musical realms.

Yuja Wang (Wang Yuja in the Chinese naming system; Wang is her family name) was born in Beijing on February 10, 1987. An only child like most Chinese of her time, she grew up with a dancer mother and percussionist father. She took up the piano at six, was identified as a major talent, and took classes at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Wang's first breakthrough outside China was a win at the Sendai International Music Competition in Japan in 2001. She moved that year to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to enter the Mount Royal College Conservatory and then, after winning the Aspen Music Festival Concerto Competition, headed for Philadelphia in 2002 to study at the Curtis Institute with Gary Graffman. In 2003, Wang made her European debut with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Switzerland, playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58. Some pianists are propelled into the A list by a single evening substituting for a famous pianist; in Wang's case, it happened three times: for Radu Lupu (2005), Martha Argerich (2007, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23), and Murray Perahia (2008, on an entire American tour). In 2008, she graduated from the Curtis Institute and made several high-profile appearances, including one at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York. The following year, she made her debut with an album of works by Chopin, Scriabin, Liszt, and Ligeti; the album appeared on Deutsche Grammophon, and she has remained almost exclusively associated with that label.

Since then, Wang has made concerto appearances with many of the world's major orchestras. She toured Asia in 2012 with the San Francisco Symphony and played a recital at Suntory Hall in Tokyo the following year. Wang has continued to live in the U.S. (in New York), saying that the country fits her independent spirit. She has toured the globe repeatedly as a soloist and recitalist; Fall 2019 brought a five-night stand with the Dresden Staatskapelle in Germany. Wang is known for fashionable on-stage outfits. She stated to Fiona Maddocks of the London Guardian that the look was intentional: "If the music is beautiful and sensual, why not dress to fit? It's about power and persuasion." By the late 2010s, Wang was popular enough that a concert she gave could appear on recordings simply as The Berlin Recital in 2018. The following year, she issued the recital The Blue Hour. Wang is also an enthusiastic chamber player who has often appeared with cellist Gautier Capuçon; in 2022, the pair issued an album of music by Rachmaninov and Brahms on Deutsche Grammophon. ~ James Manheim

The Schumann Quartett, though less than a decade old as of 2020, has achieved a high profile in its native Germany, across Europe, and in the less chamber music-friendly U.S. The group has amassed a growing and increasingly prestigious list of collaborators.

The Schumann Quartett was formed in 2012 in Cologne by siblings Mark, Erik, and Ken Schumann. They were joined by the violist Liisa Randalu. Studying with Eberhard Feltz and the Alban Berg Quartet, the group quickly found high-quality bookings. In 2016, the quartet began a three-year residency at New York's Chamber Music Society of New York in Lincoln Center. The name of the quartet has nothing to do with that of the composer Robert Schumann, but the group is the holder of a long-term residency at the Robert-Schumann-Saal in Düsseldorf, also completing a similar stint at Schloss Esterházy in Hungary, Haydn's home for most of his long quartet-writing career. It has also performed with world-class collaborators to an unusual degree for such a new group, including clarinetist Sabine Meyer, pianist Menahem Pressler, and singer Anna Lucia Richter. The Schumann Quartett has toured major European capitals and made appearances at festivals in Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands, as well as Germany.

Just a year after its formation, the Schumann Quartett was signed to the Ars Produktion label and released an album featuring string quartets by Brahms, Beethoven, and Bartók. The group moved to Berlin Classics in 2017, issuing the album Landscapes, which paired repertory works by Haydn and Bartók with newer pieces from Toru Takemitsu and Arvo Pärt. Its successor, 2018's Intermezzo, featured Richter and received an Opus Klassik award in the quintet category. In 2019, the quartet issued the album Chiaroscuro on Berlin Classics, containing music by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Glass, Shostakovich, Webern, Janáček, and Gershwin. ~ James Manheim