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The Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang is, in the words of the Irish Examiner, "an unlikely guitar hero," coming from a country where the classical guitar had only a slight presence. She was the first player to study guitar at the conservatory level in China, the first Chinese guitarist to launch an international career, and the first to present guitar performances at Beijing's prestigious National Center of Performing Arts.

Yang was born in Beijing on March 15, 1977. The restrictions of China's Cultural Revolution, which had prohibited Western music and instruments, had just been lifted. There was no tradition of teaching guitar in China, but Yang's mother, realizing that her child was both hyperactive and musically talented, suggested that Yang join a guitar group at school since she was too small to lift an accordion. Yang began studying with Chinese guitarist Chen Zhi, and at her debut at the first Chinese International Guitar Festival, she impressed the Spanish ambassador, who gave her a guitar. Other fans included guitarist John Williams, who gave her conservatory two guitars for her and other top students when he heard her perform in Beijing, and the nonagenarian Spanish guitar music composer Joaquín Rodrigo, who attended a Madrid concert by the 14-year-old Yang in the early 1990s.

Even after this record of success, Yang faced challenges when she entered Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music. "I...felt inferior to the other students and frustrated, because lots of teachers and classmates didn't know about my instrument and therefore looked down on it," she told the Examiner. "That gave me the will-power to do well and demonstrate to them just what my instrument can do." She earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London and gained a degree with distinction and several student prizes in 2002.

Yang went on to win international prizes and has performed all over North America, Europe, and the Far East. She participated in a 2003-2004 Night of the Proms tour on which she was featured at 54 concerts with a total audience of 800,000. She also performed at the 2018 BBC Proms in the Park and the 2019 Bastille Day celebrations at the Eiffel Tower.

Yang has performed many Western standards but has also taken the lead in commissioning new Chinese music for guitar. Her 2005 recording Si Ji featured Chinese miniatures for guitar. The following year, she joined the roster of the EMI label and released Romance de Amor. In 2016, she released the first of her duo recordings with English tenor Ian Bostridge, a mixed program of English and Chinese music, and in 2018 she joined violinist Mengla Huang for Milonga del Angel, a recording of music by Astor Piazzolla on the Deutsche Grammophon label. ~ James Manheim & Patsy Morita

With an abundance of both technique and charisma, Johannes Moser has emerged as a top virtuoso cellist of the 21st century. He is also a passionate chamber musician.

Moser was born on June 14, 1979, in Munich, Germany. His father was a German violinist, his mother a Canadian soprano, and he has retained dual German and Canadian citizenship. He lived in Germany, however, until moving to New York in 2012. Moser took up the violin at age five and then switched to the cello at eight. His first teacher was his father, but "[e]ventually, there was a little bit of a clash," he told the Dallas Observer. "I think we decided at some point that for the sake of peace at home, it would be better for me to move on." Studying with David Geringas, a student of Mstislav Rostropovich who worked in Germany during the latter part of his career, Moser developed an independent voice.

His first breakthrough was a silver medal showing at the 2002 Tchaikovsky Competition, performing Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33. He has since become identified with that cello showpiece, performing it dozens of times. Moser signed with the Haenssler label and recorded sonatas by Shostakovich, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, and Boris Tchaikovsky for his 2006 debut. That was followed by an album covering Saint-Saëns' complete works for cello and orchestra and by an acclaimed three-volume Brahms and His Contemporaries series; Moser earned the Brahms Prize in 2014. Several more major concerto releases propelled Moser to top-level concert slots under such conductors as Riccardo Muti, Mariss Jansons, and Gustavo Dudamel, among many others.

In 2015, Moser signed with the audiophile label PentaTone and announced plans for a new group of major repertory recordings. That began with a pairing of concertos by Lalo and Dvorák and continued in 2017 with a disc featuring the Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, and the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations. Termed a "rock star cellist" by the Observer, Moser is an informal and fashionable dresser who listens mostly to non-classical music on recordings (he prefers to experience classical music in concert). He has expressed a serious commitment to teaching aspiring musicians from kindergarten level on up. Moser is also an enthusiastic chamber musician who has performed with Joshua Bell, Emanuel Ax, and Jonathan Biss, among others. A top-notch cyclist, he has ridden across the Alps but has curtailed his long-distance cycling activity in order to protect his hands. ~ James Manheim