Swiss cellist Zoltán Despond and Bulgarian pianist Vesselin Stanev bring their long-standing chamber music partnership to DR Koncerthuset's Studie 3, combining decades of international experience and a shared passion for the repertoire.
Zoltán Despond (born 1992) studied with Pierre-Bernard Sudan in Freiburg, Marc Jaermann in Lausanne and Thomas Grossenbacher at the Hochschule der Künste in Zürich, where he completed a soloist diploma in 2018. He also studied with Enrico Dindo at the Pavia Cello Academy and has participated in masterclasses with Antonio Meneses, Christophe Coin and Giovanni Sollima. His concert tours have taken him across Europe alongside musicians including Ilya Gringolts, Silvia Simionescu, Marko Milenković and Anahit Kurtikyan. He is a recipient of the Zubaloff Prize and distinctions from the Pierre et Renée Glasson Foundation and the Friedl Wald Foundation.
Vesselin Stanev, originally from Varna, Bulgaria, studied at the Sofia Music Academy, with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, with Alexis Weissenberg, and later at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique in Paris, receiving additional guidance from Peter Feuchtwanger in London. He is a prize-winner at both the Tchaikovsky Competition and the Marguerite Long – Jacques Thibaud Competition, and performs regularly at venues including Wigmore Hall, the Philharmonie Berlin, the Gewandhaus Leipzig and the Salle Gaveau. He has recorded for RCA, Sony Classical and Gega New.