Zoltan Despond

Ludwig van Beethoven - Sonata for cello and piano no. 5 op. 102 no. 2

Robert Schumann - Romances for oboe and piano, op. 94 (version for cello and piano)

Richard Strauss - Sonata for cello and piano in F major op. 6

Born in 1992, cellist Zoltan Despond trained with Pierre-Bernard Sudan in Fribourg and Marc Jaermann in Lausanne, then with Thomas Grossenbacher at the Hochschule der Künste Zürich, where he obtained a soloist master's degree in 2018. At the Pavia Cello Academy he benefited from the valuable advice of Enrico Dindo and took part in the master classes of Antonio Meneses, Christophe Coin and Giovanni Sollima. His concert tours take him throughout the whole of Europe. He enjoys performing with musicians such as Ilya Gringolts, Silvia Simionescu, Marko Milenkovic or Anahit Kurtikyan. He takes part in the activities of the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester.

Pianist Vesselin Stanev, originally from Varna (Bulgaria), was trained at the Academy of Music in Sofia, then with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, with Alexis Weissenberg and at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris. He received further advice from Peter Feuchtwanger in London. He was a prizewinner of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and of the Marguerite Long–Jacques Thibaud Competition. He regularly performs in major concert halls across Europe, such as Wigmore Hall in London, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Leipzig Gewandhaus or the Salle Gaveau in Paris. He also travels to the Nordic countries, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Russia and Japan. He is particularly devoted to chamber music, for example with violinist Ekaterina Frolova, flautist Eva Oertle or cellist Zoltán Despond. He has recorded numerous CDs for RCA, Sony Classical and the Bulgarian label Gega New.