For more than two decades, Itamar Golan has been partnering the most outstanding instrumentalists of our time. His work has brought him great critical acclaim, and he is one of the most sought after pianists of his generation, playing on the most prestigious stages around the world.
Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, his family emigrated to Israel when he was a year old. There he started his musical studies and at the age of 7, gave his first concerts in Tel-Aviv. He was repeatedly awarded scholarships from the American-Israel Cultural Foundation which enabled him to study with Emanuel Krasovsky and his chamber music mentor, Chaim Taub. Later under a full scholarship from the New England Conservatoire of Boston, he was chosen to study with Leonard Shure.
Since his earliest years, Itamar Golan’s passion has been chamber music but he has also appeared as soloist with some of the major orchestras, including the Israel Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta, Royal Philharmonic under the direction of Daniele Gatti, the Orchestra Philharmonica della Scala, the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Riccardo Muti and Philarhomia Orchestra under the direction of Lorin Maazel.
Over the years, he has collaborated with Vadim Repin, Maxim Vengerov, Julian Rachlin, Mischa Maisky, Shlomo Mintz, Ivry Gitlis, Ida Haendel, Kyung Wha Chung, Sharon Kam, Janine Jansen, Martin Frost and Torleif Thedeen among many others. He is a frequent participant in many prestigious international music festivals, such as Salzburg, Verbier, Lucerne, Tanglewood, Ravinia, and has made a numerous recordings for big labels as Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Classics, Decca, Teldec, EMI and Sony Classical. In 1991, Itamar Golan was nominated to the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, making him one of their youngest teachers ever. Since 1994, he has taught chamber music at the Paris Conservatoire. Itamar resides in Paris, where he is involved in many different artistic projects.
A musician renowned for his intellectual curiosity, his taste for musical adventures and his commitment to society, David Grimal regularly performs on the world’s greatest stages. He has appeared as a soloist around the globe, under the baton of the world’s leading conductors. Numerous composers have dedicated works to him. A sought-after chamber musician, he is a regular guest at major international festivals.
Between 2004 and 2024, David Grimal developed a new approach to musical direction, devoting part of his career to the development of the orchestra Les Dissonances, of which he was the founder as well as musical and artistic director. The concerts of Les Dissonances have been broadcast on television in over 60 countries. This orchestra, unique in the world, brought together musicians from some of Europe’s leading orchestras to perform the great symphonic repertoire without a conductor, in the spirit of chamber music, under his direction.
In 2025, David Grimal was appointed artist-in-residence and co-artistic director of the Bucharest Radio Chamber Orchestra. He is now regularly invited by many European orchestras as conductor and soloist, following the model of Les Dissonances.
In 2022, David Grimal founded the festival Lumières d’Europe under the presidency of Serge Haroche, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics. Held in several European capitals in partnership with major cultural institutions, this festival contributes to the professional integration of young European musicians.
Between 2004 and 2024, David Grimal also founded L’Autre Saison, a concert season dedicated to the homeless in Paris. This project has welcomed some of the world’s greatest artists and enabled more than 400 people to escape extreme poverty.
His recordings for EMI, Harmonia Mundi, Aeon, Naïve, Transart, Dissonances Records and La Dolce Volta have been acclaimed by the press: BBC Choice, Choc Classica, Arte Selection, ffff Télérama, Diapason d’Or…
David Grimal teaches at the Musikhochschule in Saarbrücken. He is regularly invited to serve on the juries of major international competitions. He plays the 1710 Ex-Roederer Stradivarius.
In 2008, David Grimal was named Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
Born in Russia, Natasha Tchitch began playing the violin and piano at the age of 5. After studying at the Moscow High School of Music with Maria Sitkovskaya and at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow with the famous violist Fyodor Drouzhinin, she continued her studies at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid in the class of Gérard Caussé.
Laureate of several international prizes (Lionel Tertis Competition in England and the Grand Prize of the Almati International Competition), Natasha Tchitch became a member of the Galician Symphony Orchestra in Spain, the Paris Opera Orchestra and was also invited as a solo viola with the Monnaie Orchestra in Brussels and the Spanish National Orchestra.
She is currently a member of the Band Art Chamber Orchestra conducted by Gordan Nicolic, the ensemble Les Dissonances conducted by David Grimal and a string trio with Tatiana Samouil and Pavel Gomziakov. From 2004 to 2008, Natasha was assistant to Gérard Caussé at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris and since 2007, she has been a professor at the Centre Supérieur de Musique du Pays Basque, Musikene. Natasha Tchitch plays on a viola by Jaques Fustier (Lyon), made in 1985.
Born 1967 in Leningrad, USSR, the British/German cellist Leonid Gorokhov began playing piano at the age of 5 and the cello at 7. He attended the Central Music School to learn with Sviatoslav Zagursky, continued at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire with Anatoli Nikitin and took part in masterclasses with Daniil Shafran. Winner of the Concertino Praga (First Prize)[1] and the Paris Chamber Music Competition (Premier Grand Prix), Leonid Gorokhov is the only cellist from Russia to be awarded the Grand Prix and the First Prize of the Geneva Concours (1986). In 1995, the European Association for Encouragement of the Arts awarded the Cultural Achievement Prize to Leonid Gorokhov for “exceptional talent and outstanding artistic accomplishment”.
Following an invitation by Yehudi Menuhin, Leonid moved to UK in 1991 to pursue his playing and teaching career. Starting at the Yehudi Menuhin School, he subsequently joined the Royal Northern College of Music before moving to the Royal College in London, and finally, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2008 followed a move to Hannover, Germany, to hold a Professorship for cello at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien. Among his past and present students are winners of international competitions and members of orchestras in various parts of the world.
Leonid performed internationally as a soloist with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchester de la Suisse Romande, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Symphony Orchestra Biel, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra London, and The English Symphony Orchestra, as well as appearing frequently in recitals and chamber music festivals. (Writing music for his instrument was for him a strictly private subject until recently, when support and interest of friends and colleagues have made a number of his pieces available to the audience.)
Composer, recorder and shakuhachi player, conductor and musicologist, Cesar Viana studied composition with Christopher Bochmann and Constança Capdeville. Viana’s works are included in the repertoire of institutions such as Gulbenkian Ballet, National Ballet of Portugal, Teatro da Trindade, Mafra International Festival, and others.
Among the interpreters of his chamber music are Ensemble João Roiz, Lev Vinocour, Luís Cunha, Tatiana Samouil, Christian Scholl, Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro, Teimuraz Janikashvili, Malte Refardt, Stephane Levesque, Ensembre Cinque Elementi, Liviu Scripcaru, Cecilia Bercovich, Carlos Marín Rayo, João Roiz Ensemble, Natalia Tchitch, Quarteto Sao Roque, Laura Granero, Ajay Ranganathan, Adrian Florescu, Gerardo Gramajo, Pavel Gomziakov, Daniel Schvetz, Bertrand Raoulx, Carlo Colombo, Quarteto Lopes-Graça, Síntese-Grupo de Música Contemporânea, and many others.
As a conductor, Viana has recorded for EMI classics, BMG, Philips, RCA, Strauss, Xerais and Bajja records, and has been invited by orchestras such as Radiophilarmonie Hannover (NDR), RIAS Big Band Berlin, Metropolitana de Lisboa, Filarmonia das Beiras, Clássica da Madeira, Francisco de Lacerda (Azores), etc. As a performer, Viana’s activities range from medieval to contemporary music, from the Japanese Shakuhachi flute to the shepherds bagpipes, from baroque to sefardic music… In these and other musical fields, he has collaborated with Nuno Torka Miranda, Mika Suihkonen, Cristiano Holtz, Maria João Pires, Annemieke Cantor, Hugo Naessens, and many others, as well as the ensembles Sinfoniab, Birundum, Cobras e Son and Vozes Alfonsinas. All these musical references contribute to a rich and varied musical universe, and have an obvious influence on his compositions.
Cesar Viana has done extensive research on the mostly unknown Portuguese orchestral repertoire from baroque to romanticism, editing, restoring and publishing the scores. He performed and recorded works by João de Sousa Carvalho, João Domingos Bomtempo, Francisco de Sá Noronha and Francisco dos Santos Pinto for major international labels.
Viana was artistic director of the ensembles Sinfoniab and Cobras e Son, of Belgais – the arts center founded by Maria João Pires – and of Sesimbra’s Early Music Festival.
He also had directive or coordination responsibilities at Fundacion Caja Duero (Salamanca) and Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa. Until 2013 he was a member of the board of OPART (National Opera and Ballet of Portugal) and artistic director of ‘Festival ao Largo’, one of the main classical music festivals in Portugal.
Currently he teaches composition at Centro Superior de Enseñanza Musical Katarina Gurska (Madrid), is music director of Concerto Moderno (a Lisbon based string orchestra) and is musical director of Bajja Jazz Ensemble (Madrid).
Born in Lebanon in 1963, Paul Audi is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and holds a doctorate in philosophy. He is the author of a thesis on J.-J. Rousseau as well as some fifteen books and thirty articles, mostly devoted to the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in the West during the Modern Era.
Believing that these relations cannot be taken into account without at the same time questioning the ins and outs of human subjectivity, Paul Audi aims to found on this basis an “ethics of creation” to which, since the publication of his book Créer (Create), he has given the name of “Esth/éthique”.
He has also studied the writings of Romain Gary. In 2003, he published an analysis of Gary’s vision of Europe in an essay entitled L’Europe et son fantôme (Europe and its phantom); a few years ago, he also edited and prefaced Gary’s texts on General de Gaulle for the “Folio” collection. Paul Audi has also published numerous works on Schopenhauer and the tradition of German “philosophical pessimism”. He was awarded the Prix Femina Essai 2024 for his essay Tenir tête (Resist), published by Stock.
Nicolas Tenzer, a senior civil servant and intellectual, is a former student of the Ecole normale supérieure de la rue d’Ulm and ENA, and was head of department at the Commissariat général du Plan and rapporteur at the Cour des comptes.
President of Initiative pour le développement de l’expertise française à l’international et en Europe (IDEFIE) and director of Le Banquet magazine, he is the author of three official reports to the government, including one on the civil service and two on France’s international organization and strategy.
He is the author of 21 books, including France: la réforme impossible ? (Flammarion, 2004) (which includes a long chapter on the reform of the Plan), Quand la France disparaît du monde (Grasset, 2008), Le monde à l’horizon 2030 (Perrin, 2011), La fin du malheur français (Stock, 2011) and La France a besoin des autres (Flammarion, 2012). He also teaches at numerous grandes écoles and universities in France and abroad.
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