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.

Vesselin Stanev was born in Bulgaria. Within a short timespan he earned an outstanding reputation as a musician, as attested by his distinctions at the International Tchaikovsky Competition and at the Concours Long - Thibaud. Vesselin Stanev’s career has taken him to such major concert venues in Europe as Wigmore Hall, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and the Salle Gaveau in Paris, as well as to the Nordic countries, Southeastern Europe, Russia, and Japan. For the RCA label he has also made two recording projects of music by Franz Liszt: the "Etudes d'exécution transcendante" in 2010 and, in 2014, a program titled "Music and Myth."