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Violinist Baiba Skride parlayed prominent competition wins early in her career into international concert prominence. She is also a noted chamber music player.

Skride was born in the Latvian capital of Riga on February 19, 1981. She grew up in a musical family; she, along with sisters Lauma (piano) and Linda (viola), took their first music lessons from their grandmother, and they have continued to perform together. Skride's mother was a pianist, and her father was a choral conductor. By age five, Skride was concertizing on the violin. She enrolled in 1995 in a school for musically talented youngsters in Riga and then in the Rostock Conservatory in Germany, commuting for a time between the two cities. In Rostock, her teacher was Petru Munteanu. Skride also took master classes with Ruggiero Ricci and Lewis Kaplan. Her record of competition prizes, which dated back to a youth event in Bulgaria in 1988, culminated in a win at the 2001 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition in Brussels. That led to concerto appearances with top orchestras all over Europe, North America, and Asia, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic. As a chamber musician, she has been joined by cellists Sol Gabetta and Alban Gerhardt and harpist Xavier de Maistre, among many others. For a time, Skride performed on the 1734 "Ex Baron Feilitzsch" Stradivarius, owned by violinist Gidon Kremer.

Skride has been a prolific recording artist. In her early twenties, she was signed to the Sony Classical label, replacing Hilary Hahn on its roster when the latter moved to Deutsche Grammophon. Her recording debut was an album of Mozart and Haydn violin concertos with the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra. Two of her Sony albums won the prestigious Echo Klassik awards in Germany. After her 2008 album Souvenir Russe, she signed with the Orfeo label, where she has continued to issue new albums almost annually. She has focused mostly on standard repertory but was featured on a recording of composer Heino Eller's violin concerto on Ondine in 2018; that year, she also issued a recording of violin concertos by Bernstein, Korngold, and Miklos Rósza. In 2020, Skride released a new recording of Mozart's five violin concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under conductor Eivind Aadland, featuring new cadenzas by Skride herself. Skride returned on Orfeo in 2022 with the album Violin Unlimited, featuring solo violin sonatas, and in 2024, she was heard on a recording of Britten's Violin Concerto with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, conducted by Marin Alsop. ~ James Manheim

As principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Vasily Petrenko has built the group into one of Britain's strongest ensembles, both artistically and financially. Assuming the leadership of several other prominent orchestras in the 2010s, Petrenko has been viewed widely as one of the top stars on the European conducting scene.

Vasily Petrenko was born in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia), on July 7, 1976. He is unrelated to Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko. He attended the Boys' Music School of the venerable St. Petersburg Capella and then went on to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where his principal teacher was Ravil Martynov. Although he had master classes with Mariss Jansons and Esa-Pekka Salonen, Petrenko's musical education was otherwise completed entirely in Russia. He began his career as an opera conductor, serving as resident conductor of the St. Petersburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1994 to 1997, and quickly developing a repertory of some 30 theatrical works. He also served as conductor of the State Academy Orchestra of St. Petersburg from 1994 to 2007. In the late '90s and early 2000s, Petrenko began winning competitions, some of them, like Spain's Cadaques International Conducting Competition (2003), outside Russia, and those led to new opportunities.

A guest conducting debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in 2004 turned into a three-year appointment as principal conductor the following year; at 29, Petrenko was the youngest conductor ever to hold the post. He increased audience sizes, made strong recordings, and improved the orchestra's financial footing. His contract was extended to 2012, then to 2015 (with a promotion to chief conductor), and finally to an open-ended arrangement where Petrenko was required only to give three years' notice before stepping down. At the same time, he was taking on guest conducting assignments with orchestras in Britain, Russia, and Scandinavia, and these led to his appointment as principal conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in 2009 and as chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic in 2011. He has also held guest conducting positions at various European opera houses. In 2015, Petrenko added the conductorship of the European Union Youth Orchestra to his portfolio. In 2018, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London announced Petrenko's appointment as its new chief conductor, effective in 2021. He was also principal conductor of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation, but he suspended his participation in that group's activities after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

With the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Petrenko made many critically acclaimed recordings, including an award-winning 2007 reading of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony and a series devoted to the symphonies of Shostakovich that concluded in 2015. In the late 2010s, Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic have recorded for the Onyx and Warner Classics labels; with the Oslo Philharmonic, he has recorded for Lawo Classics. His recorded repertory emphasizes Russian music, but he has also proven an enthusiastic interpreter of music by Elgar and other English composers. In 2019, Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic issued a recording of Elgar's Enigma Variations on Onyx. He was hardly slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing seven recordings with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic in 2020 and 2021. In 2022 and 2023, he and the Liverpool group backed pianist Boris Giltburg on installments in a new cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos, released on the Naxos label. By that time, Petrenko's recording catalog comprised more than 65 items. ~ James Manheim