PINCHAS ZUKERMAN (Tel Aviv 16.6.1948), Israeli violinist, violist and conductor of Polish origin. He began his studies in Israel and continued them in New York at the Juilliard Scholl with Ivan Galamian and Isaac Stern. In 1967 he won the ‘Leventritt Award’ ex-aequo with Kyung-Wha Chung and began a concert career that quickly established him in America and Europe. His activity in the field of chamber music, as soloist conductor of small ensembles, is very intense. He has played with pianist Daniel Barenboim, cellist Jacqueline du Pré, violinists Itzhak Perlman, Shlomo Mintz and Isaac Stern, and conductor Zubin Mehta. In 1974 he began his successful conducting career in London. From 1980 to 1987 he was the director of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. Since 1998 he has been Music Director of the National Art Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. In addition, he founded his own chamber music ensemble, the Zuberman Chamber Player, in 2002.

DANIEL BARENBOIM (Buenos Aires, 15.11.1942), Argentinean pianist and conductor, naturalised Israeli. After making his first appearance in Buenos Aires as a piano prodigy and student of Vincenzo Scaramuzza, he moved with his family to Israel in 1952. He later studied piano (with Edwin Fischer) and conducting (with Igor Markevitch) in Salzburg. He made his debut as a pianist in London in 1955 and triumphantly in New York in 1956. From the mid-1960s onwards he alternated between solo and duo work with his wife Jacqueline du Pré (who died prematurely in 1987) and his activities as a renowned conductor, usually from the piano keyboard, as in the Mozart and Beethoven Concertos, which have been recorded several times. In 1973 he made his conducting debut (Don Juan at the Edinburgh Festival) and in 1981 he conducted at the Bayreuth Festival. After conducting the Orchestre de Paris from 1975 to 1990 and resigning as Artistic Director of the Opéra Bastille in 1989, he was Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1991 to 2006. Since 1992 he has been Music Director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. He was also Music Director of La Scala in Milan from 2011 to 2015.