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Kristian Bezuidenhout is generally ranked among the leading period-instrument keyboard players of his generation and is perhaps best known for his fortepiano interpretations of music by Mozart; with the Harmonia Mundi label, he recorded the entire solo keyboard output of the composer, garnering high praise from across the globe.

Bezuidenhout was born in South Africa in 1979. He began his studies at age ten in Australia. He had advanced keyboard studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where his teachers included Malcolm Bilson, Rebecca Penneys, and Paul O'Dette; he studied harpsichord with Arthur Haas. In 2001, Bezuidenhout captured first prize at the Bruges Fortepiano Competition. That same year, he made his first recording, a disc of Mozart works on the Fleur de Son label entitled Sturm und Drang. He steadily built a successful career, and for the 2005-2006 season was named the Most Exciting Young Musician by the Dutch Federation of Music and Drama. Bezuidenhout's repertoire takes in works by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and other Romantic-era composers on the modern piano. As a harpsichordist, he has delved into an array of works by J.S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, and many other Baroque composers. Bezuidenhout performs regularly with some of the leading early music ensembles, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, and the Freiburger Barockorchester. In 2017, Bezuidenhout was named the artistic director of the Freiburger Barockorchester and the principal guest conductor of the English Concert.

In the chamber realm, he's partnered with such artists as violinists Viktoria Mullova and Petra Müllejans. With Müllejans, Bezuidenhout made an acclaimed 2009 disc of three Mozart violin sonatas, on Harmonia Mundi. Bezuidenhout had a notable year in 2007: he collaborated with tenor Jan Kobow on an acclaimed Atma Classique recording, Schwanengesang, a disc of songs by Schubert and Mendelssohn, and he was given the Erwin Bodky Prize by the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Society for Early Music. Bezuidenhout's complete survey of Mozart's keyboard works on Harmonia Mundi has earned several awards, including a Diapason d'Or de L'année, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and Caecilia Prize. In 2020, he issued the Harmonia Mundi album Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 5, with Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester.

Besides Harmonia Mundi, Bezuidenhout has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Atma Classique, and other major labels. He has taught at the Eastman School of Music and the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland. ~ Robert Cummings

The Freiburger Barockorchester (Freiburg Baroque Orchestra) is a period-instrument ensemble focused on the authentic performance of Baroque music, though its repertoire extends into the Classical and Romantic periods as well. The group is mainly led by the concertmaster and often features members of the ensemble as soloists.

The Freiburger Barockorchester was founded in 1987 in the German city known as the unofficial "Capital of the Black Forest" by a group of students who shared an interest in playing Baroque music on authentic period instruments. The orchestra performed without a conductor during the first three years of its existence, preferring to select a musician from within its ranks to lead its music on a case-by-case basis. Nevertheless, in 1990, Thomas Hengelbrock was named joint musical director along with Gottfried von der Goltz, a situation that lasted until 1997, when Hengelbrock stepped down. His place was taken by Petra Müllejans, who lead the Freiburger Barockorchester in tandem with von der Goltz. Müllejans was succeeded by Kristian Bezuidenhout in 2017. The ensemble regularly performs with guest conductors for more expansive works and still often performs without a conductor.

The Freiburger Barockorchester tours all over the world and records with frequency; it utilizes distinguished guest conductors on about a quarter of its public concerts, but not on recordings. The orchestra contributed some of the very best recordings to be issued by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi in the waning years of its association with BMG. The group's controversial recording of the J.S. Bach Mass in B minor, led by Hengelbrock and featuring the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, is perhaps the only recording of this work in recent memory to approach Bach's masterwork from a genuinely new perspective. The Freiburger Barockorchester is also known for its capability accompanying singers, such as Sandrine Piau and Angelika Kirchschlager; the latter appears with the group on a Christmas DVD entitled Sounds Like Christmas. Although it did not accompany Cecilia Bartoli on her recording Opera Proibita, the Freiburger Barockorchester accompanied Bartoli in touring with its program, with Müllejans leading the ensemble. The Freiburger BarockConsort is a chamber group that is drawn from the inner ranks of the Freiburger Barockorchester.

Since BMG folded its classical operation in 1999, the Freiburger Barockorchester has appeared on the Virgin, Naïve, and Harmonia Mundi labels, among others. The group earned Ensemble of the Year (Historical Instruments) at the 2012 Echo Klassik Awards. The Freiburger Barockorchester has remained active as a recording group, issuing several albums most years. Among these is an Aparte recording of Mozart's Youth Symphonies in 2019 and a cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos on Harmonia Mundi, with Bezuidenhout as the soloist and Pablo Heras-Casado conducting; the final volume of this set was released in 2022. That year, the Freiburger Barockorchester signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis & Keith Finke

Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado has often conducted early music and contemporary opera, as well as many forms of music that fall chronologically in between. He became the conductor of the Freiburger Barockorchester in Germany in the late 2010s and has recorded frequently with that group.

Heras-Casado was born in Granada, Spain, on November 21, 1977. His father was a police officer. Heras-Casado sang with a school choir from age seven and took up the piano two years later. He studied music at the Granada Conservatory but switched to art history and theater as a student at the University of Granada. Then he took up conducting definitively as a career, studying at the University of Alcalá and taking further lessons with early music conductors Harry Christophers and Christopher Hogwood. Early in his career, Heras-Casado was a founder or co-founder of both the early music group Capella Exaudi and the avant-garde ensemble SONÓORA. In 2007, he formed La Compañía Teatro del Principe, which specializes in Spanish Baroque opera. Heras-Casado has continued to work with that group but has also conducted a wide variety of instrumental ensembles, including the Spanish National Youth Orchestra and the Baroque Orchestra of Granada.

Heras-Casado made his U.S. debut in 2008 at Carnegie Hall in New York as the conductor of the Ensemble ACJW (now Ensemble Connect) and in Britain the same year with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Heras-Casado became the principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke's in London in 2011, remaining in that post until 2017, staying on as conductor laureate. He has conducted both opera and ballet, making his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in 2013 in a production of Verdi's Rigoletto. He also spent three seasons as the principal guest conductor at the Teatro Real in Madrid and has maintained connections with his hometown as director of the Granada Festival since 2017. During this period, he was also active as the principal conductor of the Freiburger Barockorchester, broadening its repertory well into the Romantic era. His debut recording came with that group in 2013 on the Harmonia Mundi label; they recorded Schubert's Symphony No. 3 in D major, D. 200, and Symphony No. 4 in C minor, D. 417 ("Tragic").

Heras-Casado has recorded mostly with the Freiburger Barockorchester on Harmonia Mundi. He has also recorded with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, leading a performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, the Balthasar Neumann Choir & Ensemble, in Monteverdi's Selva morale e spirituale, and other groups. In 2020, he and the Freiburger Barockorchester backed fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout in a recording of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 19, and Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73. The group's recordings of Beethoven, both piano concertos and symphonies, continued into the 2020s, and in 2022, he also recorded a complete set of Schumann's symphonies with the Münchner Philharmoniker. The year 2023 saw Heras-Casado leading the Freiburger Barockorchester in Schubert's Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, D. 485, and Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 ("Unfinished," here numbered as Symphony No. 7), and also the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic on Warner Classics in the work REMS by contemporary composer Jacob Mühlrad. Heras-Casado has earned many honors, including a Conductor of the Year nod in 2014 from Musical America and designation in 2018 as a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the government of France. ~ James Manheim