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Janine Jansen's 1997 debut with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw signaled the rise of a major violin talent. Jansen wasn't well-known outside of the Netherlands until her 2002 London debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy. Thereafter, invitations to appear with the leading European and American orchestras poured in, and in 2003, she was awarded the Dutch Music Prize, the highest artistic award given in the Netherlands. With a formidable technique and immaculate tone, fashioning her interpretations with both imagination and maturity, Jansen is regarded as one of her generation's foremost violinists. Her repertory is broad, taking in works by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, and Beethoven and modern composers like Robert Helps and Richard Dubugnon. In 2021, Jansen was accompanied by Sir Antonio Pappano on the album 12 Stradivari, featuring Jansen performing on 12 of the legendary luthier's surviving violins.

Jansen was born in Soest, Netherlands, on January 7, 1978. She began lessons on the violin at six and had advanced studies at the University of Utrecht. Her list of teachers includes Philippe Hirschhorn, Coosje Wijzenbeek, and Boris Belkin. Following her 1997 Concertgebouw debut, Jansen slowly began building her career abroad. From 1998, she regularly took part in the Spectrum Concerts Berlin, a chamber music series of the Berlin Philharmonic, and in 2001, she performed the Brahms Violin Concerto, Op. 77, with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. Jansen was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2002 until 2004. While her London debut with Ashkenazy in 2002 ushered in more concert opportunities, it also led to several successful recordings. In 2003, Jansen founded the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht and has served as its guest artistic director since. In the 2007-2008 season, Jansen made impressive debuts with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, and in October 2009, she debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic in an acclaimed performance of the Britten Violin Concerto, Op. 15. Jansen's continued performances with the Concertgebouw earned her the Johannes Vermeer Prize from the Dutch government in 2018. She has been a violin professor at the Haute École de Musique Vaud Valais Fribourg since 2019.

Naxos issued her first album in 2003, a recording of works by John Harbison, and Decca followed in the two succeeding years with an album of various concert works simply called Janine Jansen and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. While the latter recording generated some controversy, it became a digital best-seller and received an Echo Award in 2006. Two more Echo Awards followed for her Decca recordings of Mendelssohn and Bruch concertos (2007) and Beethoven and Britten concertos (2009). In 2011, Decca issued Jansen's first recital disc, Beau Soir, a collection of French works featuring accompaniment by pianist Itamar Golan. Jansen joined Martin Fröst, Lucas Debargue, and Torleif Thedéen for a 2017 Sony Classical recording of Messiaen's Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps. Jansen was brought to London in 2020 for a project dreamed up by violin dealer J&A Beare's managing director, Steven Smith, to play and record 12 of the surviving violins built by Antonio Stradivari. The logistics of Jansen's travel to London and transporting the near-priceless instruments during the coronavirus pandemic added additional difficulty to the project, but Jansen was able to spend time practicing with each instrument and chose a work that would optimally display the sound of each violin. The resulting album, 12 Stradivari, was released on Decca in 2021, with frequent collaborator Pappano as accompanist. The project was filmed by director Gerry Fox for the documentary Janine Jansen: Falling for Stradivari. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke

Best known as an opera conductor, Antonio Pappano expanded his activities into orchestral music in the late '90s. Since 2002, he has been the music director of London's Royal Opera at Covent Garden.

Pappano was born to Italian immigrant parents in Epping, Essex, U.K., on December 30, 1959. His father was a chef who was a tenor singer and a voice teacher on the side. Pappano started piano lessons at age six. After several years, he resolved to make the piano a career. When Pappano was 13, his family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, so that his father could take a full-time music teaching job. Pappano took piano lessons with Norma Verrilli and held a variety of jobs that included being a pianist in a cocktail bar. Later, he studied composition with Arnold Franchetti and conducting with Gustav Meier, but at the time, he had no ambition to become a conductor. He became a rehearsal pianist at the New York City Opera and then at the Frankfurt Opera. "The traditional route for conductors is via the piano, working with singers in the opera house. That's how it worked for me," he told the London Independent. Pappano also did rehearsal work with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and there, he attracted the attention of conductor Daniel Barenboim. Barenboim hired Pappano as an assistant, and in 1987, Pappano made his debut at the Norwegian Opera. By 1990, he was the music director there, and in 1992, he was named to the same position at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. He made his recording debut there in 1996, conducting a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah with the Orchestre Symphonique et Choeurs du Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie.

In 1993, Pappano caught a major break when he subbed for an ailing Christoph von Dohnányi, leading a new Vienna State Opera production of Wagner's Siegfried. Guest conducting appearances at houses in Britain and around Europe followed. Late in the decade, he added orchestral appearances to his résumé, serving from 1997 to 1999 as a guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic and appearing with the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many other orchestras. In 2002, Pappano was named the music director of the Royal Opera Covent Garden, a position he held through 2024; Jakub Hrůša was designated his successor, taking up the baton in 2025. In 2005, Pappano also became the music director of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, continuing to hold that position through the early 2020s. Pappano has a substantial catalog of well over 80 albums, predominantly, but not exclusively, devoted to opera. Pappano has recorded many of the core works of the Italian opera repertory for the EMI Classics label. He also conducts German and French opera enthusiastically, as well as a variety of instrumental music that has included a set of Leonard Bernstein's three symphonies with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in 2018. In 2020, Pappano conducted a new recording of Verdi's opera Otello, starring Jonas Kaufmann in the title role and, once again, featuring the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He and that orchestra moved to Warner Classics in 2022 for a recording of Rossini's Messa di Gloria, returning the following year with Puccini's Turandot with Kaufmann in a lead role. ~ James Manheim