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Gianandrea Noseda has developed a well-deserved reputation as a conductor who has mastered a wide range of both symphonic and stage music. He has conducted operas at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as at other major operatic venues across the globe, and he is one of the most prolific conductors of the 21st century.

Noseda was born in Milan on April 23, 1964. He first studied piano, then later focused on composition and conducting. His teachers included Valery Gergiev, Myung-Whun Chung, and Donato Renzetti. In 1994, Noseda won two prestigious conducting competitions, the first in Douai, France, and the latter in Cadaques, Spain. Following his win in Cadaques, he was named the principal conductor of the Cadaqués Orchestra. His official debut followed shortly when he led the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. With this ensemble, he made his first recording (1995), a disc of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, and other guitar works with soloist Emanuele Segre for the Claves label.

In 1997, upon the initiative of Gergiev, Noseda was made principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theater, the first foreigner to be given this honor. In 2002, Noseda made his debut at the Met conducting Prokofiev's War and Peace and was appointed principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. One of his early recordings, featuring Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, came the same year with that group. He held this position until 2006 when his title was changed to chief conductor, a post he held until 2011. That year, he was named the principal guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Noseda emerged as one of the top operatic conductors on the British scene and beyond, with muscular, often hyper-dramatic interpretations that drew audiences. His work was amply captured on recordings, with a video of Gounod's Faust appearing in 2016, with the Orchestra e Coro Teatro Regio Torino, and one of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers at the Met in 2017. Noseda made a series of high-profile appearances conducting vocal recitals by four of the world's top singers: Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko, and Diana Damrau. In 2016, Noseda was named the principal guest conductor of the London Symphony, and the following year, he was named the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. In 2018, he was named the general music director of the Zurich Opera House, beginning with the 2021-2022 season.

Noseda has made numerous recordings for a variety of labels, including Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, Philips, and Chandos. His most popular recordings include the best-selling 2003 solo debut of soprano arias by Netrebko with the Vienna Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon. Most of his symphonic recordings have been made for the Chandos label and include a complete cycle of the Liszt symphonic poems (finished in 2007) and a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies with the BBC Symphony. In 2020, Noseda issued several albums, including Dvorák's New World Symphony and Copland's Billy the Kid with the National Symphony, Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 5 and 1 with the London Symphony, and Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero with the Danish National Symphony. Recordings in his Shostakovich cycle with the London Symphony continued to appear through the COVID-19 pandemic; an album combining the Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54, and Symphony No. 15 in A minor, Op. 141, appeared on the LSO Live label in 2023. By that time, his recording catalog comprised more than 80 items. ~ Robert Cummings & James Manheim

Soprano Camilla Tilling has emerged as one of the world's leading Mozart singers, equally at home on the operatic and concert stages, in the recital hall, and in the recording studio, where she has been associated with the BIS label in her native Sweden. She also often sings lighter roles in the operas of Richard Strauss.

Tilling was born in the small town of Linköping, in central Sweden, in 1971. "As a child, I would sing for hours," she told Britain's Opera magazine. "I suppose I was just one of those children who loved singing, and when we went out in the car, I'd sing for the whole ride. I grew up on a farm; there were no neighbors close by, so we could make a lot of noise, and I could sing without disturbing anyone." Sweden's strong school musical education and choral programs honed her skills, and she enrolled at the Academy of Music and Drama in Goteborg. While a student there, in 1997, Tilling made her debut as Olympia in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann. She completed her studies at the Royal College of Music in London, graduating in 1998. In 2001, she made her recording debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra on a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major. In 2009, Tilling made her solo recording debut with BIS in Rote Rosen, a recital of Strauss songs with pianist Paul Rivinius.

Tilling quickly found major roles at opera houses in Sweden, Britain, and the U.S. Early on, she made her New York City Opera debut as Corinna in Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims, and in 2002, she appeared as Sophie in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. The lighter roles of Strauss have been a Tilling specialty, along with the operas of Mozart; one of her most common Mozart roles has been Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. In 2005, she made her debut at La Scala in Mozart's Idomeneo. Tilling has worked with historical performance-oriented conductors as well as those in the operatic mainstream, appearing in a recorded performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm.

By the mid-2010s, Tilling was paired in concert with the world's leading conductors: Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic (with whom she performed Bach's St. Matthew Passion), Christoph von Dohnányi, Bernard Haitink, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, among others. She has also recorded Schubert lieder and I skogen (2015), a selection of Scandinavian songs for the BIS label. In 2017, she issued Loves Me... Loves Me Not..., a recording of arias by Mozart and Gluck. Tilling appeared with several other singers on a Sony Classical recording of Schumann's song cycle Myrthen, Op. 25. In 2020, she returned with the recital Jugendstil: 1898-1916 on BIS, and she was heard in the early 2020s on a recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 ("Choral") with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda. ~ James Manheim