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Eldbjørg Hemsing is a Norwegian violinist admired for her charismatic and sophisticated interpretations of Norwegian and contemporary repertoire. Additionally, she is co-founder of the annual Hemsing Music Festival, artistic director of the SPIRE art competition, and senior artistic advisor of the Advisory Board for the Arts research firm. She was born in 1990, in Valdres, Norway, and she began learning the violin and hardanger fiddle from her mother, Bente Hemsing, when she was around five years old. Hemsing learned at a rapid pace, and after one year, she made her debut at the National Theater with the royal family present in the audience. When she was seven, she became a student at the Barratt Due Institute of Music, where she studied with Alf Richard Kraggerud and Stephan Barratt-Due. She sought further refinement and began studies with Boris Kuschnir in 2008, and she placed third in the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition of that year. She also started collaborations with composer Tan Dun and premiered his violin concertos The Love and Fire Ritual in 2010. She appeared on the album Varde with her older sister Ragnhild Hemsing in the following year, and she performed at the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. By this time, Hemsing was very well known in Norway through her frequent performances on Norwegian radio and TV. Her debut album, Borgström: Violin Concerto Op. 25; Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 with Olari Elts and the Wiener Symphoniker, was released in 2018, and it was very well received by critics. Months later, she also released Dvorák: Violin Concerto; Suk: Fantasy & Love Songs, followed by Tan Dun: Fire Ritual - Violin Concertos in 2019, which earned her a Spellemann award nomination. She’s in high demand as a soloist, and in 2020, she performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Vancouver Symphony, the Zürcher Kammerorchester, and several other major ensembles. Hemsing signed a recording contract with the Sony Classical label in 2021 and released the single Winter Meditation with the Hestia Quartet. She won an Opus Klassik Award for her 2023 album Arctic, and in 2024, she released Rolf Wallin: Five Seasons; Whirld; Stride; Spirit with Wu Wei and Andris Poga. ~ RJ Lambert

Håvard Gimse is best known for his interpretations of piano works by Sibelius and Grieg. Gimse's repertory covers works by such relatively obscure composers as Geirr Tveitt (much of the solo output and several concertos), Klaus Egge, Ole Bull, and others. Yet, Gimse can hardly be called a specialist as his repertory takes in works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, among many others. He has toured throughout Europe, the Americas, and Japan and has performed at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, London's Wigmore Hall, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Gimse joined cellist Truls Mørk for a recording of cello sonatas by Bridge, Britten, and Debussy in 2022.

Gimse was born in Kongsvinger, Norway, on September 15, 1966. He began piano lessons at age six and later studied at the Norwegian State Music Academy. In 1987, he won first prize at the Jugend Musiziert Competition in Frankfurt. Naxos issued a recording of Grieg works in 1993 with cellist Øystein Birkeland that included Gimse performing the Op. 7 Sonata. He gave his American debut in 1994 with the Riverside Symphony Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall in a highly praised performance of Prokofiev's difficult Fifth Concerto. Meanwhile, Gimse was studying for an advanced degree at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste, earning it in 1995. Gimse's career was soon in orbit, aided by a series of prestigious citations, including the Steinway Prize in 1995 and the Grieg Prize in 1996. In 1997, he began serving at the Oslo Chamber Music Festival, where he also performs and sits on the board of directors. 1997 was also the year Gimse began recording the Sibelius solo output for Naxos, with the final volume issued in 2004. That year, Gimse was awarded the Sibelius Prize.

Gimse has gained positive notice in the chamber realm: in 2005, he made a highly successful tour of Japan with violinist Arve Tellefsen and cellist Jan-Erik Gustafsson. Later that year, Gimse appeared in a series of acclaimed concerts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in performances of the Grieg concerto. Gimse teamed with Tellefsen once more in 2010 for a tour of Norway marking the 200th anniversary of Ole Bull's birth; that year, Gimse was also heard on the violinist's album Arve Tellefsen plays Ole Bull. The following year, Gimse issued a recording of works by Schumann and Schubert on the Naim label.

Gimse previously served as the artistic director of the Elverum Festival in Norway and is the music director of the Fredrikstad Mozart Festival. He is a piano professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. In 2022, Gimse joined cellist Truls Mørk, a longtime collaborator, for a recording of cello sonatas by Bridge, Britten, and Debussy on the Alpha label. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke