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Hélène Grimaud is a French-born virtuoso pianist known for her fearlessly individual interpretations of standard and lesser-known piano repertoire. Also a devoted wildlife conservationist, in 1999 she founded the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York.

Grimaud was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1969, and both of her parents worked as teachers. She began exploring the piano when she was seven years old, and she studied with Jacqueline Courtin. Later, she studied with Pierre Barbizet in Marseille, and when she was 13, she was accepted into the Paris Conservatory, where she studied with Jacques Rouvier. After three years at the conservatory, Grimaud won the premier prix in piano performance. She sought further refinement at the conservatory and enrolled in the cycle de perfectionnement under Rouvier; she also received instruction from György Sándor and Leon Fleisher. The following year, she released her debut recording of Rachmaninov's Sonata No. 2 and Etudes-tableaux op. 33, which won the Grand Prix du Disque in 1986.

Grimaud began performing outside of the conservatory shortly thereafter and gave her debut recital in Tokyo in 1987. She was invited by Daniel Barenboim to perform with the Orchestre de Paris later that year, and she continued to receive invitations to perform with major orchestras throughout the world. In the 1990s, she released several recordings, including Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2; Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major and the live album Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 15. She made her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Claudio Abaddo in 1995, and in 1999 she performed with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic for the first time. She also created the Wolf Conservation Center that year.

In 2002 Grimaud became an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, and she was honored with membership to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. It was also around this time that she began an additional career as an author, and in 2003 she published her autobiography, Variations Sauvages, followed by Leçons particulières in 2005, and Retour à Salem in 2013. Also in 2013, she received an Echo Klassik Award for her collaboration with cellist Sol Gabetta on the album Duo. In 2018 Grimaud released the album Memory, which featured the music of Chopin, Debussy, and others. During the 2019-2020 season, she performed at Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Yannick Nezet-Seguin; she appeared in Luxembourg and Munich with MusicAeterna and Teodor Currentzis; and she toured Germany with the Bamberger Symphoniker and Jakub Hrusa. Additionally, she performed material from her album Memory throughout the U.S., while also devoting her time to the Wolf Conservation Center. With a focus on the music of Valentin Silvestrov, she issued the solo album Hélène Grimaud plays Valentin Silvestrov in 2022, and the 2023 release Silvestrov: Silent Songs featured a collaboration with baritone Konstantin Krimmel. ~ RJ Lambert

Capturing several competition prizes early in his career, baritone Konstantin Krimmel has displayed an affinity for singing lieder. He has found an increased presence on European concert and operatic stages and issued his debut album, Saga, with pianist Doriana Tchakarova in 2019 on the Alpha label.

Krimmel was born in Ulm, in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, in 1993. Krimmel began his musical career as a member of the boys' choir at Ulm's St. George Parish Church and had early lessons with Christiane Rockenbach. From 2014 to 2020, he studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart with Teru Yoshihara. While a student of Yoshihara, Krimmel made appearances as Zoroastro in a Heilbronn Theater production of Handel's Orlando in the 2016-2017 season, and he debuted as Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni in Severodonetsk, Ukraine, in 2018. That year, Krimmel won first prizes and audience awards at the inaugural International Helmut Deutsch Song Competition in Vienna and the International Haydn Competition for Classical Song and Aria in Rohrau. Several more competition prizes followed, and he signed to the Alpha label in 2019, where he released his debut album, Saga, featuring songs and ballads by Schumann, Loewe, Adolf Jensen, and Schubert. He was joined on that release by pianist Doriana Tchakarova, a frequent collaborator. Krimmel has had further instruction with Tobias Truniger since 2020.

2021 saw several major advancements in Krimmel's career: he became a member of the Bavarian State Opera, where he has appeared in productions of Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and Britten's Peter Grimes, among others; he joined soprano Sabine Devieilhe for Raphaël Pichon-led performances of Brahms' Requiem; toured Bach's Christmas Oratorio with Peter Dijkstra and his Nederlands Kamerkoor; and was heard with soprano Sandrine Piau and tenor Stuart Jackson on a recording of Handel's Brockes-Passion. He was also a BBC New Generation Artist from 2021-2023. Krimmel's recording catalog continued to expand, including the 2022 album Zauberoper, featuring arias by Mozart, Haydn, and Salieri. The following year, he issued a recording of Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs with pianist Hélène Grimaud on Deutsche Grammophon, and he was joined by pianist Daniel Heide for a recording of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, once more returning to the Alpha label. ~ Keith Finke

The Camerata Salzburg is a chamber orchestra associated with Mozart's music and the Mozarteum University in the composer's hometown of Salzburg. Inspired by various conductors, the group has experimented with historical performance practice and with music as far forward in time as that of Arnold Schoenberg. The Camerata Salzburg has a recording catalog dating back well into the LP era. In the 2000s, it has recorded for major labels including Decca and Deutsche Grammophon, where it backed cellist Kian Soltani on the album Schumann in 2024.

The Camerata Salzburg was founded in 1952 by Bernhard Paumgartner, a Viennese conductor and musicologist who specialized in Mozart's music. The group's original name was Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg, later shortened to Camerata Academica Salzburg and finally, by the late 2010s, to Camerata Salzburg; the first album issued under the short name, Mozart: Horn Concertos 1-4 (2019), featured hornist Felix Klieser. At first, the group's membership comprised Paumgartner's students and fellow faculty members at the Salzburg Mozarteum University. Paumgartner remained conductor until his death in 1971 and led the group in a cycle of Mozart piano concertos with pianist Géza Anda in the '60s. He was succeeded three years later by Antonio Janigro, who introduced subscription concerts in Salzburg. Under Janigro and violinist-conductor Sándor Végh, principal conductor from 1978 until his own death in 1997, the group's activities steadily took on a more international scope. In the '80s, the group recorded with pianist András Schiff. An early digital recording was one of Vivaldi's Die vier Jahreszeiten ("The Four Seasons") in 1988.

Végh's influence on the Camerata Salzburg was fundamental, but the group has also been shaped by later conductors and by guest artists. Roger Norrington, who has a strong historical performance orientation, served as principal conductor from 1997 until 2006. Violinist Leonidas Kavakos held the title of principal guest artist in the early 2000s and served as artistic director from 2007 to 2009. France's Louis Langrée became principal conductor in 2011 and served until 2016. He was the last principal conductor to date; since then, the orchestra members make artistic decisions, with guests stepping in when a conductor is necessary. Those guests are a prestigious group that includes Franz Welser-Möst, John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, and Theodor Currentzis; guest instrumentalists and singers are similarly notable and include violinists Janine Jansen and Anne-Sophie Mutter, pianist Vikingur Ólafsson, and tenor Rolando Villazón. The orchestra appears not only at the Mozarteum but frequently in Vienna at such venues as the Konzerthaus, and also in cities beyond Austria. It has continued to record frequently for such labels as Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, and Orfeo. On Deutsche Grammophon, the Camerata Salzburg appeared on the 2022 album Hélène Grimaud Plays Valentin Silvestrov, followed on the same label by 2024's Schumann, featuring cellist Kian Soltani. ~ James Manheim