Zoltán Despond - cello & Vesselin Stanev - piano

Born in 1992, the cellist Zoltán Despond studied with Pierre-Bernard Sudan in Fribourg, Marc Jaermann in Lausanne, and Thomas Grossenbacher at the Zurich University of the Arts, where he graduated with a master’s in solo performance in 2018. From Enrico Dindo at the Pavia Cello Academy he received valuable advice, and he also attended master classes with such teachers as Antonio Meneses, Christophe Coin, and Giovanni Sollima. He concertizes across Europe and enjoys working with such musicians as Ilya Gringolts, Silvia Simionescu, Marko Milenkovic ́, and Anahit Kurtikyan as well as collaborating with Vesselin Stanev, Anna Bertogna, and Richard Octaviano Kogima at the keyboard. He also performs regularly as an adjunct with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. Zoltán Despond has received the Zubaloff Prize and is a laureate of the Pierre et Renée Glasson Fund and the Friedl Wald Foundation. 

The pianist Vesselin Stanev, who is originally from Varna (Bulgaria), studied at the Music Academy in Sofia, with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, with Alexis Weissenberg and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. Further inspiration came from Peter Feuchtwanger in London. The Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the Concours Marguerite Long – Jacques Thibaud saw him as a prize-winner. He regularly performs in major concert halls in Europe, such as the Wigmore Hall in London, the Philharmonie Berlin, the Gewandhaus Leipzig or the Salle Gaveau in Paris. He also travels to the Nordic countries, to Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Russia and Japan. He devotes particular attention to chamber music, for example with the violinist Ekaterina Frolova, the flautist Eva Oertle or the cellist Zoltán Despond. He has made numerous CD recordings for RCA, Sony Classical and the Bulgarian label Gega New.