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Violinist Nicola Benedetti followed in a line of British Isles teenagers hailed as revitalizers of classical music. In advance of making any recordings whatsoever, she was signed to a six-album contract by the Universal label in 2005 and assigned to its prestigious Deutsche Grammophon imprint, with a paycheck reportedly in excess of one million pounds. She has lived up to her prodigal promise with a series of albums on Decca and other labels. These included a 2024 recording of Beethoven's Triple Concerto, Op. 56, with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor.

Born July 20, 1987, in West Kilbride, Ayrshire, Scotland, Benedetti was the daughter of a prosperous manufacturer of plastic cases for first-aid kits. At four, she tagged along with her eight-years-older sister Stephanie to a violin lesson and then took up the instrument herself (Stephanie has been active as an orchestral musician). Nicola attended the Yehudi Menuhin School. She gave performances at several top British concert halls, later moving to London to study with violinist Maciej Rakowski. When Benedetti was 14, she won a Prodigy of the Year contest on England's Carlton Television network. A hint of her potential crossover appeal came when she drew a crowd of 10,000 at the rock-oriented Glastonbury Festival's "Classical Extravaganza" in the summer of 2003.

Benedetti took a big step toward mainstream classical stardom when she won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year award in 2004, performing Szymanowski's virtuoso concerto and becoming the first Scot to take home the prize. Her debut recording on Deutsche Grammophon came the following year with an album of concertos by Chausson, Szymanowski, and Saint-Saëns with the London Symphony Orchestra. She paused her career to pursue further studies, but soon, her schedule was as full as ever, encompassing a 2010 debut at the BBC Proms, chamber music recitals with her trio (Leonard Elschenbroich, cello; Alexei Grynyuk, piano), chamber and concerto performances in North America and Europe, and visits to British schools to encourage new talent. Released to coincide with a trio of performances at the 2012 BBC Proms, The Silver Violin -- a collection of music made famous in films -- consolidated Benedetti's position as one of the most popular British violinists of her generation.

She moved to the Decca label in 2011 for the album Italia, in which she ventured into Baroque music, but mostly, she has played standard Romantic repertory. Another new facet of her skills was revealed in 2019 when she recorded the Violin Concerto and Fiddle Dance Suite of jazz composer Wynton Marsalis, for which she won a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Benedetti returned in 2020 with a recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61. After the concerto album Baroque in 2021, she returned in 2024 on Decca with the album Chanson de Nuit. In 2017, Benedetti received the Queen's Medal for Music, becoming the youngest honoree up to that time, and in 2019, she was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire. ~ James Manheim

The events of Beethoven's life are the stuff of Romantic legend, evoking images of the solitary creator shaking his fist at Fate and finally overcoming it through a supreme effort of creative will. His compositions, which frequently pushed the boundaries of tradition and startled audiences with their originality and power, are considered by many to be the foundation of 19th century musical principles.

Born in the small German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, he received his early training from his father and other local musicians. As a teenager, he earned some money as an assistant to his teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, then was granted half of his father's salary as court musician from the Electorate of Cologne in order to care for his two younger brothers as his father gave in to alcoholism. Beethoven played viola in various orchestras, becoming friends with other players such as Antoine Reicha, Nikolaus Simrock, and Franz Ries, and began taking on composition commissions. As a member of the court chapel orchestra, he was able to travel some and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron to him. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn; despite the prickliness of their relationship, Haydn's concise humor helped form Beethoven's style. His subsequent teachers in composition were Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. In 1794, he began his career in earnest as a pianist and composer, taking advantage whenever he could of the patronage of others. Around 1800, Beethoven began to notice his gradually encroaching deafness. His growing despondency only intensified his antisocial tendencies. However, the Symphony No. 3, "Eroica," of 1803 began a sustained period of groundbreaking creative triumph. In later years, Beethoven was plagued by personal difficulties, including a series of failed romances and a nasty custody battle over a nephew, Karl. Yet after a long period of comparative compositional inactivity lasting from about 1811 to 1817, his creative imagination triumphed once again over his troubles. Beethoven's late works, especially the last five of his 16 string quartets and the last four of his 32 piano sonatas, have an ecstatic quality in which many have found a mystical significance. Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.

Beethoven's epochal career is often divided into early, middle, and late periods, represented, respectively, by works based on Classic-period models, by revolutionary pieces that expanded the vocabulary of music, and by compositions written in a unique, highly personal musical language incorporating elements of contrapuntal and variation writing while approaching large-scale forms with complete freedom. Though certainly subject to debate, these divisions point to the immense depth and multifariousness of Beethoven's creative personality. Beethoven profoundly transformed every genre he touched, and the music of the 19th century seems to grow from his compositions as if from a chrysalis. A formidable pianist, he moved the piano sonata from the drawing room to the concert hall with such ambitious and virtuosic middle-period works as the "Waldstein" (No. 21) and "Appassionata" (No. 23) sonatas. His song cycle An die ferne Geliebte of 1816 set the pattern for similar cycles by all the Romantic song composers, from Schubert to Wolf. The Romantic tradition of descriptive or "program" music began with Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony No. 6. Even in the second half of the 19th century, Beethoven still directly inspired both conservatives (such as Brahms, who, like Beethoven, fundamentally stayed within the confines of Classical form) and radicals (such as Wagner, who viewed the Ninth Symphony as a harbinger of his own vision of a total art work, integrating vocal and instrumental music with the other arts). In many ways revolutionary, Beethoven's music remains universally appealing because of its characteristic humanism and dramatic power. ~ Rovi Staff

British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason won the prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 2016 when he was just 17 years old, performing Shostakovich's fiendish Cello Concerto No. 1. The first Black musician to win the competition in its 38-year history, Kanneh-Mason was born and raised in a suburb of Nottingham, England. The third of seven siblings who all turned out to be exceptionally musically talented, he was inspired initially by his eldest sister Isata, who showed an early aptitude for the piano and was accepted at the age of eight into the Royal Academy of Music's junior department. Following in her footsteps, Sheku took up the cello at the age of six, and, aged nine, won a scholarship to also attend the Royal Academy. He joined Chineke, Europe's first BAME (Black and minority ethnic) classical orchestra, and, together with Isata and his violinist brother Braimah, formed the Kanneh-Mason Trio, appearing in 2015 on Britain's Got Talent. His experience on the show prepared him for Young Musician's relatively sedate televised segments. After winning Young Musician, where his playing immediately drew comparisons with Jacqueline du Pré, he was signed by Decca. His 2018 debut album Inspiration featured the Shostakovich concerto along with other classical pieces and his own versions of songs by Bob Marley and Leonard Cohen. It became the first debut album by a Young Musician winner to chart, entering the U.K. pop rankings at number 18. That same spring, he and an orchestra performed for guests at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle while the couple signed the register. ~ John D. Buchanan

Benjamin Grosvenor is an important contemporary British pianist known for his fresh interpretations of piano repertoire from the Romantic era. He began his career at 11 years old, as the winner of the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition of 2004, and now as a mature artist, he's widely admired for his balance of virtuosic technique and expressive musicality.

Grosvenor was born in 1992 in Southend-on-Sea, England, and he has four older brothers. His father taught English and drama, and his mother was a professional piano instructor. He initially began learning to play the piano from his mother when he was six years old. Grosvenor later attended the Westcliff High School for Boys and studied piano with Hilary Coates and Christopher Elton. He gave his first recital in 2003, and he also performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 later that year with his school orchestra. In 2004, he won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition, in the keyboard division, and he became a student of Daniel-Ben Pienaar and Julian Perkins at the Royal Academy of Music. He participated in the 2005 BBC documentary "Being a Concert Pianist," and in 2009 he recorded his first album, This and That, which included the works of Nikolai Kapustin, Domenico Scarlatti, and others. He became a BBC New Generation Artist in 2010, and in 2011 he entered a contract with the Decca Classics label. The following year, he completed his bachelor's degree in music at the Royal Academy, and his first album with Decca, Chopin Liszt Ravel, won a 2012 Gramophone Award for best instrumental album. His next three releases, Rhapsody in Blue (2012), Dances (2014), and Homages (2016) were also critically acclaimed. In 2016, he earned a fellowship at the Royal Academy, and he was awarded the Ronnie and Lawrence Ackman Classical Piano Prize. He collaborated with violinist Hyeyoon Park in 2019 on the album Many Voices: 10 New Pieces for Violin. Grosvenor's 2020 release Chopin Piano Concertos was awarded both a Gramophone Award and the prestigious Diapason d'Or de l'année. In 2021, he performed debuts with the Chicago Symphony led by Paavo Järvi and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra led by Maxim Emelyanychev. That same year, he also released the album Liszt under a renewed contract with Decca, and he was the artist in residence at Wigmore Hall. Grosvenor toured Europe and the U.S., and his reputation as a master interpreter of Chopin led to his participation in the "Chopin and His Europe" festival in Warsaw. He released Schumann & Brahms in 2023, and began a tour of the U.S. and Latin America with the Doric String Quartet and as a solo artist. ~ RJ Lambert

London's Philharmonia Orchestra is generally considered one of Britain's top symphonic ensembles and has sometimes been named as the very best. Formed by recording executive Walter Legge at the end of World War II, the orchestra benefited from the presence of several top Continental conductors in its first years and has generated an impressive recording catalog from the very beginning. Although London already boasted the world-class London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestras, Legge resolved to create an ensemble that would equal the best in the German-speaking musical sphere. To this end, he recruited top young musicians (some 60 percent of the players were still serving in the British armed forces at the beginning) and, after he was turned down by friend Thomas Beecham, a roster of star German conductors. These included Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, Herbert von Karajan, and Otto Klemperer. At first, Legge avoided the appointment of a permanent conductor, and the players learned to produce superb results under several different kinds of artistic leadership.

Primarily a recording ensemble at first, the Philharmonia began giving concerts that were often innovative in content. The young Leonard Bernstein recorded Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major with the group, and the orchestra gave the world premiere of Strauss' Four Last Songs with soloist Kirsten Flagstad in 1950 at the Royal Albert Hall. In the mid-'50s, Furtwängler died and Karajan departed for Berlin; Legge appointed the 74-year-old Klemperer conductor for life. Klemperer's performances were often idiosyncratic but just as often brilliant, and many of his recordings with the Philharmonia remain in print. A complete cycle of Brahms symphonies under Klemperer was reissued by the firm Broken Audio in the 2010s.

The orchestra ran into trouble in the early 1960s as financial problems arose and several of its best musicians, including hornist Dennis Brain, met untimely deaths. Legge attempted to disband the group in 1964, but the players, encouraged by Klemperer, formed the New Philharmonia Orchestra and continued to perform. The orchestra performed at the Beethoven bicentennial in Bonn, West Germany, in 1970. That year, Lorin Maazel was appointed associate principal conductor to reduce the workload of the aging Klemperer, but he clashed with the orchestra members, who had maintained a self-governing structure. Instead, Riccardo Muti was appointed chief conductor in 1973. Four years later, the original name was restored.

Under Muti, the orchestra often recorded opera and entered upon what was widely regarded as a second golden age. In 1981, under conductor Kurt Sanderling, the Philharmonia made the first digital recording of Beethoven's complete symphonies. Muti was succeeded in 1984 by Giuseppe Sinopoli, whose performances of key British repertory such as the works of Elgar were criticized, but who extended the orchestra's reach in Italian opera. Christoph von Dohnányi ascended the podium in 1997 and took the orchestra on tours of continental Europe and, in 2002 and 2003, to a residency in New York. Bicontinental Finnish conducting star Esa-Pekka Salonen became chief conductor in 2008 and has continued to maintain the orchestra's high standards; his departure was announced for the year 2021, creating an opening at the very top level of English music-making. The Philharmonia continued to record for EMI after Legge's departure but moved to Deutsche Grammophon under Sinopoli and has since recorded for a large variety of labels. In 2019, the Philharmonia backed innovative Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen on her debut release, with Salonen conducting. ~ James Manheim

Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali was termed "the latest sit-up-and-listen talent to emerge from the great Finnish conducting tradition" by The Guardian. He has conducted major orchestras in Finland and Sweden, and in 2021, he became principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London.

Rouvali was born in Lahti, Finland on November 5, 1985. His parents were both musicians and members of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. Rouvali started as a percussionist, represented Finland in the Eurovision Young Soloists competition in 2004, and performed on percussion with the Lahti Symphony, the Finnish Radio Symphony, and other groups. Studying at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, he switched to conducting in his early twenties and took classes with Leif Segerstam, Hannu Lintu, and Jorma Panula. In September of 2009, Rouvali gained attention when he stepped in to conduct the Finnish Radio Symphony on an emergency basis. The following year he guest-conducted the Tapiola Sinfonietta, leading to a three-year association with that ensemble. Rouvali's longest-running engagement in Finland has been with the Tampere Philharmonic, which he guest-conducted in 2010 and 2011, and then, in 2013, became chief conductor; he retained that position until 2023. That year, he made his recording debut, leading the Oulu Symphony Orchestra and guitarist Timo Korhonen in works by Kimmo Hakola and Toshio Hosokawa.

Meanwhile, he was beginning to find work outside Finland, with the Copenhagen Philharmonic in Denmark, where he became principal guest conductor in 2013, and with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, where he made appearances as guest conductor (after one of which, his publicity claims, "delirious joy spread like wildfire throughout the audience"), and was appointed chief conductor two years later. He has also made guest appearances with the Oslo Philharmonic, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, among others. In 2017, Rouvali was named one of two principal guest conductors of the Philharmonia Orchestra, ascending to principal conductor in 2021. Even before that, he had begun to record with the Philharmonia, issuing albums of music by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev on the Signum Classics label. In 2019, he led the Gothenburg Symphony in a recording of Sibelius' Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39, on the Alpha label. That marked the beginning of a critically acclaimed Sibelius cycle; in 2022, his recording of the Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5, with the tone poem Pohjola's Daughter, appeared on Alpha. ~ James Manheim