Sergey Ostrovsky is a solo violinist, conductor, founder and first violin of the Aviv String Quartet for 27 seasons, founder and Artistic Director of the ‘Ensemble Symphonique de Genève’ and has taught violin at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève and Neuchâtel since 2009. He was First Solo Violin of the ‘Orchestre de la Suisse Romande’ from 2007 to 2012. He was also First Solo Violin of the ‘Orquesta de la Communidad Valenciana’ from 2012 to 2015.

Sergey Ostrovsky won the Grand Prize at the 3rd Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. He is a laureate of the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, 2nd Prize winner of the ‘Schubert and Modernity’ International Competition in Graz (Schubert Prize), as well as a laureate of the ‘Prague Spring’ International Competition and the Rodolfo Lipitzer Prize.

As a soloist, Sergey Ostrovsky plays with prestigious orchestras such as the ‘Orchestre de la Suisse Romande’, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra (Poland), the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the ‘Orquesta de la Communidad Valenciana’, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the ‘Luzerner Sinfonieorchester’ and the Israel Chamber Orchestra.

A passionate conductor, Sergey Ostrovsky is regularly invited to conduct in Switzerland, Spain, Russia, Estonia, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia and Israel.

In 2015, Sergey Ostrovsky created a string ensemble, the ‘Solistes de Neuchâtel’, and in 2023 the ‘Ensemble Symphonique de Genève’. Sergey Ostrovsky's role as artistic director of the’ Ensemble Symphonique de Genève’ is multifaceted, both as an ‘artistic manager’ and as a musician ‘involved’ in the performances. From the latter point of view, he will be able to conduct the orchestra from the podium but also conduct the violin as a soloist.

As a chamber musician, Sergey Ostrovsky has played in the world's most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Louvre Auditorium, the ‘Théâtre du Châtelet’, London's Wigmore Hall and the Sydney Opera House. His ‘Aviv String Quartet’ has also made numerous recordings (Hoffmeister, Dohnanyi, Shostakovich, Schubert, Schulhoff, etc.), some of which have received critical acclaim.

Noémie Bialobroda has been the violist of the Aviv Quartet since 2014, leading an active international career with the ensemble. Their performance of Beethoven’s complete string quartets at the Ansermet Studio in Geneva in 2018-2019 was a great success and strengthened their presence in French-speaking Switzerland.

Noémie Bialobroda, passionate about teaching, is since 2025, viola professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon. She is also Chamber Music Professor and Chamber Music Coordinator at the Haute École de Musique de Genève. Previously, she taught at the Conservatoire de Lausanne and the Conservatoire de Genève. During the summer, she teaches at the Flaine International Music Academy. Her students have won prizes in prestigious national and international competitions.

In recognition of her contributions to music, Noémie Bialobroda was awarded the Leenaards Foundation cultural grant in the music category in 2024.

As a performer, she is invited to renowned concert seasons and festivals, including Wigmore Hall (London), the IRCAM Manifeste Festival, and the Cité de la Musique (Paris), among others. She performs with artists such as Abdel Rahman El Bacha, Yovan Markovitch, Luis Claret, Boris Garlitsky, François Guye, Philippe Müller, Tedi Papavrami, Jean Sulem, Jean-Pierre Wallez, and the Rosamonde Quartet, giving concerts across Europe, Israel, and the United States.

Dedicated to contemporary music, Noémie has premiered two solo viola pieces at IRCAM: Caprice for Solo Viola and Electronics by Japanese composer Keita Matsumiya (2012) and Drifting by Pierre Stordeur (2013). She is also regularly invited to perform with the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt and the Contrechamps ensemble in Geneva.

Noémie Bialobroda studied with Nobuko Imai and Miguel Da Silva at the Haute école de Musique de Genève and later at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where she completed an Artist Diploma (third cycle) with Professor Jean Sulem.

Noémie Bialobroda is the co-founder and artistic director of the Geneva International String Academy.

This is one of the best CD recordings of the year – perhaps of the decade […]. Here we encounter the closest we have witnessed […] to a new Casals.”

(Early Music Review on the CD recording of J.S. Bach’s 6 Suites for Solo Cello)

“Peter Bruns does what he does best on his Tononi cello from 1730: he declaims, just like Pablo Casals, who also used to own the instrument. Peter Bruns once confirmed the closeness to Casals, saying: ‘I also try to speak with the instrument.’”

(Maja Ellmenreich in Deutschlandradio Cologne)

The cellist Peter Bruns has established an excellent reputation in the international music world as one of Germany’s leading cellists. Born in Berlin, he studied with Professor Peter Vogler at Berlin’s “Hanns Eisler” Academy of Music.

Peter Bruns has performed as soloist and chamber musician in renowned concert halls throughout all continents, including the Berliner Philharmonie, the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Wigmore Hall in London, concert halls in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul, in the Semperoper Dresden, in the Leipziger Gewandhaus as well as at the most important festivals including the Kuhmo, Bergen, Berlin and Dresden Music Festivals, the Budapest Spring Festival, the Seoul Spring Festival and Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus festival.

The artist has also performed as soloist with many major orchestras and has toured with the Staatskapelle Dresden as well as with the RAI, MDR and Berlin symphony orchestras. He has collaborated with conductors such as Giuseppe Sinopoli, Eliahu Inbal, Gianandrea Noseda, Christoph Prick, Marc Albrecht and Bruno Weil.

His fascination with the ancient language of music and the instrumentation of the various stylistic periods has led to close collaboration with renowned orchestras in this field, in particular with the “Akademie für Alte Musik” Berlin, with whom Peter Bruns has played for CD productions, concerts and festivals (Bergen, Brügge, Berlin, Regensburg, Köthen).

From 1993-2000, Peter Bruns was Artistic Director of the Moritzburg Festival. From 1998 to 2005, he was Professor for Cello at the Dresden School of Music and, since 2005, has held the same position at the Academy of Music in Leipzig.

Master classes led Peter Bruns to many German cities as well as to London, New York, France, Sweden and Australia.

Developing also a career as conductor, Peter Bruns is the Artistic Director of the Mendelssohn Kammerorchester Leipzig since 2014, and performs regularly in its own concert series in the Gewandhaus Leipzig as well as on tours.

Peter Bruns has recorded a series of award winning CDs including Brahms’s Cello Sonatas, Bach’s Six Suites for Cello Solo, the works of Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Bloch, Charles Koechlin and Robert Schumann, a recording of a Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach concert which won the Cannes Classical Award for “Best CD of the Year”, Antonin Dvorak’s works for cello and orchestra with the Staatskapelle Dresden and his highly acclaimed recordings of Haydn’s, Schumann’s and Volkmann’s Cello Concertos with the Mendelssohn Kammerorchester Leipzig.

Peter Bruns plays on a cello from Carlo Tononi, Venice 1730, which was once owned by Pablo Casals.

Born in Ashdod, Israel, in 2001, Sophi Rochlin studied the violin with Elena Mazor at the Givatayim Conservatory and then joined Boris Garlitsky’s class at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany.

Trained in the programmes of the Jerusalem Music Center, including the Young Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the David Goldman Program for Outstanding Young Musicians, she has taken part in the Keshet Eilon International Mastercourses, the Saline Royale Academy, Elba Isola Musicale d’Europa, the New Virtuosi International Mastercourse in England and the Geneva International String Academy. She has worked with Vadim Gluzman, Miriam Fried and Zakhar Bron, among others.

Awarded a special prize at the Vladimir Spivakov International Violin Competition in 2018 and a 2024 AFSF Opportunity Award, she is a scholarship holder of Villa Musica (Schloss Engers) and a member of Musethica Israel. She plays a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin from the collection of Yehuda Zisapel.

Violinist Pierre-Alain Baron has formed the Duo Baron-Fleury with pianist Pierre Fleury since 2021. Founded in Brussels, the duo went on to study at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon.

A laureate of the Kreutzer International Music Competition in 2024, the duo explores the violin and piano repertoire from aesthetic, organological and historical angles: major works by Beethoven, Schubert, Ravel and Messiaen, lesser-known pieces and women composers such as Marguerite Canal, Rebecca Clarke and Galina Ustvolskaya. It performs in France, Belgium and Switzerland, where it also gives masterclasses and educational sessions.

Born in Yerevan in 1996 into a family of musicians, Feliks Harutyunyan began the violin at the age of five. Since 2022 he has held a permanent position in the first violins of the Vienna Volksoper Orchestra.

After the Tchaikovsky Music School and the Komitas State Conservatory in Yerevan, where he studied with Alexander Kosemyan, he joined Dominika Falger’s class at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, earning his bachelor’s degree in 2019 and his master’s degree in 2021, both with distinction; he then continued with her at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna.

As a soloist he has appeared with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Armenian National Chamber Orchestra – with which he made his debut in 2018 in Mozart’s A major Concerto – and the Symphony Orchestra of the University of Graz, with which he played Bartók’s Second Concerto in 2021. Guest concertmaster of the Armenian National Chamber Orchestra, he also plays with the Wiener Symphoniker and the Tonkünstler-Orchester.

First-prize winner at the Váša Příhoda International Violin Competition and the Malta International Music Competition 2018, finalist of the Ysaÿe and Grażyna Bacewicz competitions in 2019 and laureate of the Khachaturian Competition in 2020, he founded the string ensemble Grazer Solisten. A scholarship holder of the Académie musicale de Villecroze and the Geneva International String Academy, he has worked with Renaud Capuçon, Tedi Papavrami, Sergey Ostrovsky and Mihaela Martin.

Of Korean origin, Seat Byeol Choi trained in Russia, first in Vladivostok and then at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Edouard Grach. In 2017 she joined Sergey Ostrovsky’s class at the Haute École de Musique de Genève, where she obtained her Master’s in Concert Performance in 2022, before continuing at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste with Ilya Gringolts in the Soloist Diploma programme.

In 2025 she joined the Orchestre national de Metz as co-soloist. A versatile and inquisitive musician, she develops projects in chamber music and the solo repertoire, plays with orchestras for special projects and takes an interest in historically informed performance on period instruments.

Winner of the EMCY Prize at the Kloster Schöntal Competition in 2015, second prize at the Concours d’Interprétation Musicale de Lausanne in 2019 and first prize at the Kiwanis Competition in 2023, she has worked in masterclasses with Alfred Brendel, Ilya Kaler, Vadim Gluzman and Silvia Marcovici, and has performed in Vienna, Tel Aviv, Moscow and London, among other cities. At the Geneva International String Academy she appeared in 2021 under the name Se Tsoi.

Born in Geneva in 2001, Johannes Moehrle started the viola at the age of four with Laurent Rochat and went on to study with Noémie Bialobroda and Andriy Viytovych. In 2019 he joined Tabea Zimmermann’s class at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, and in 2020 began a degree in French and German literature at the University of Oxford; he believes that exploring the links between the two art forms deepens his understanding of both.

He has attended masterclasses with Nobuko Imai, Garth Knox and Jean Sulem, and has played in the Verbier Festival orchestras, at the Zermatt Music Academy and at the Karajan and Seiji Ozawa academies. A member of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra since 2021, he has been artistic director of the Ensemble PuplinGE Classique, resident at the Puplinge Classique festival, since 2022.

Born in Hong Kong in 1999, Kwan Hon Gordon Lau started on the violin and switched to the viola in 2014 for its fuller, warmer sound. After the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with Werner Dickel, he studied from 2017 to 2022 at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin with Tabea Zimmermann and German Tcakulov, including an Erasmus semester in Geneva with Máté Szűcs. Since 2023 he has been studying for a master’s degree with Tabea Zimmermann at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

A chamber musician trained by Eberhard Feltz and the Artemis Quartet, he has played with Sayaka Shoji, Daniel Hope, Rainer Schmidt and Peter Bruns, and has been guest principal viola of the Kammerakademie Potsdam and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Orchestra. He has performed at the Seiji Ozawa Academy, the Zermatt Music Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and the Moritzburg Festival, and in 2020 appeared with his brother on Daniel Hope’s ARTE programme “Hope@Home”.

A scholarship holder of Villa Musica Rhineland-Palatinate since the 2019/20 season, he received the “Star of Villa Musica 2023” award. A former member of the Hong Kong Children’s Choir, he is also a keen singer. He plays a 2013 viola by Patrick Robin, on loan from the Hochschule Hanns Eisler.

Born in Madrid, Guillermo Ortega Santos studied with Asier Polo and since 2017 has continued his training at the Musik-Akademie Basel (Switzerland) under the tutelage of Rafael Rosenfeld, where he has obtained both the Master Performance and Soloist degrees thanks to scholarships from the Lyra Foundation, the Rudolf Vontobel Foundation and the Rita Zimmerman Foundation. He has also received valuable guidance from Rainer Schmidt, Anton Kernjak, Claudio Martínez-Mehner and Steven Isserlis.

Guillermo has been awarded prizes in numerous competitions, including the Kiefer Hablitzel|Göhner Prize 2023 (Switzerland), the Rahn Kulturfonds 2019 and 2020, Third Prize and Prize for the best interpreter of Spanish music in the International Competition "Villa de Llanes" and First Prize in the National Competition "Ciudad de Vigo", among others. He has performed in the most important Spanish and European concert halls, such as the Konzerthaus Berlin, Musikverein, Concertgebouw and the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, under conductors of the stature of Paavo Järvi, Gianandrea Noseda, Herbert Blomstedt, Heinz Holliger and Krzysztof Penderecki.

From 2019 to 2021, Guillermo was Praktikant at the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich and currently collaborates with orchestras such as the Zurich Opera House, Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Orquesta Nacional de España. He has also been invited to perform at festivals such as OCM Prussia Cove, Musikdorf Ernen, Festival der Stille and Davos Festival. Guillermo also has participated in the program “Young Soloist”, recording 3 programs for the Spanish National TV.

From September 2024 he takes up a permanent position with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. 

Cosima Federle was born in Regensburg in 2002 and started playing the violoncello at the age of four.

At 2010 she was admitted to to the "Bayrische Frühförderklasse", Regensburg under Wolfgang Nüsslein and from 2015-2019 she had lessons with Hanno Simons in Munich. In 2019 Cosima became a junior student of Peter Bruns at the “Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig” and continued there as a full student since 2020.

Her playing was enriched by participation in masterclasses taught by Wolfgang Boettcher, Wen- Sinn Yang, László Fenyö, Jan Vogler, Natalia Gutman, Boris Kusnezow, Kian Soltani, Jens- Peter Maintz, Mischa Maisky and Alfred Brendl. Cosima has won various national and international competitions, including first prizes at the "International Dotzauer Competition", Dresden, at the "Làszlò Spezzaferri International Music Competition", Verona, at “Jugend Musiziert“ and 2nd prizes at the "International David Popper Competition“, Hungary and at the "Concours International de Tremplin", Paris, as well as the Music Prize of the City of Regensburg, a special prize by the "Harald Genzmer Foundation" and a Special prize by the German "Bundesapothekenkammer".

In 2013 Cosima and her brother were one of the main protagonists of the movie "Jugend Musiziert- der Film“, which was broadcasted by various German TV channels. She is a scholarship holder of the "Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben" and the "International Music Academy Liechtenstein" and received further scholarships by the "Geneva International String Academy", Switzerland, "Musique à Flaine", France, from the "Hildegard-Schmalzl Foundation" and the "Dresden Music Festival".

Since 2017 she was an annual scholarship holder of the project "Meisterschüler-Meister" in the Neuhardenberg Castle, Berlin with Jan Vogler.

Cosima has played at several festivals, including "Musique en Été", Geneva, "Dresden Music Festival", "Festival Momentum", Stolberg and performed at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Stadtcasino Basel and Gewandhaus Leipzig.

She produced several recordings with the “Bayrischer Rundfunk“, “Deutschlandfunk“, “Norddeutscher Rundfunk“ and “Radio Berlin Brandenburg“.

Cosima plays a cello by Nicolas Lupot, Paris 1821, that has been given to her as a loan by the “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben“.

https://konstanze-pietschmann.com

Konstanze Pietschmann is a cellist from Leipzig. After studying in the young talent promotion class of Anna Niebuhr at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy " in Leipzig, she began her music studies in the class of Prof. Peter Bruns at the same university in 2018. After numerous first prizes at "Jugend musiziert " at the national level, participation in major international competitions followed, including the "Concours Reine Elisabeth " in Brussels. Among others, she was awarded 3rd prize at the International Dotzauer Competition, 1st prize at the International Cello Competition "Anna Kull " in Graz, the "International Suggia Award " in Porto and most recently 1st prize at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University Competition in Berlin.

She made her debut as a soloist in 2019 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig with the Cello Concerto by Robert Schumann. This was followed by concerts with the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra, “Konzerthausorchester” Berlin, the Orquestra Sinfonica do Porto, the award- winning ensemble LGT Young Soloists and others. Several chamber music concerts have already taken Konstanze to the concert halls of Portugal, Italy, Ethiopia, Hungary, Greece, Israel, the USA and many more. In 2021 she founded the chamber orchestra “Camerata Espansiva!” to give young soloists a stage.

She regularly participates in master classes and festivals. At the Geneva String Academy, Musique a Flaine and “Con Spirito” Festival she shared the stage with musicians such as Sergey Ostrovsky, Noemie Bialobroda, Tobias Feldmann, Pauline Sachse, Andrej Bielow and Christophe Poiget. In addition to master classes with Peter Bruns, Alfred Brendel, Marc Coppey, Wolfgang Böttcher, Norman Fischer, Valentin Erben (Alban Berg Quartet) and members of the Quatuor Ysaÿe, Konstanze received important impulses from Wen-Sinn Yang and Anne Gastinel.

Since 2019, Konstanze Pietschmann has been a scholarship holder of the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Leipzig e.V. association. She has also received scholarships from the Jütting Foundation, the Harald Genzmer Foundation and Musique à Flaine. Konstanze plays a cello by Charles Gaillard (Paris, 1867) from the German Musical Instrument Fund of the “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben”.