Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor, Simone Young has previously held the posts of General Manager and Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Music Director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg, Music Director of Opera Australia, Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of both the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Lisbon and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. Her appointment as Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has recently been extended through until the end of 2029.

An acknowledged interpreter of the operas of Wagner and Strauss, she has conducted complete cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival, Vienna Staatsoper, Berlin Staatsoper, Hamburg Staatsoper and, in 2026, La Scala Milan.

Simone Young has an extensive and celebrated recording catalogue. Her first performance as Chief Conductor in Sydney, featuring Mahler’s Symphony No.2 Resurrection and the world premiere of William Barton’s Of the Earth was released worldwide on Deutsche Grammophon, and performances of Elgar & Vaughan Williams, Das Rheingold and Gurrelieder have been filmed for Sydney Symphony On Demand. Her Hamburg recordings include the Ring Cycle, Mathis der Maler (Hindemith), Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (Schmidt) and symphonies of Bruckner, Brahms and Mahler. She has also recorded Benjamin Britten Folksongs and songs of Richard Strauss with Steve Davislim, and songs by Wagner and Strauss with Lisa Gasteen.

Simone Young’s return invitations to the great orchestras of the world in 2026 will include the Suisse Romande, the Orchestre nationale de Lyon, West German Radio Orchestra Cologne, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France Paris, National Symphony Orchestra Washington, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco and Montreal Symphony Orchestras, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester. She also returns to ANAM, Melbourne to lead their orchestra in a 30th birthday celebration Gala performance.

Firmly established as one of the world’s leading opera conductors, 2026 will see Simone Young return to the Berlin Staatsoper (Lohengrin and Nabucco), La Scala Milan (the Ring cycle and a new work by Luca Francesconi) and Götterdämmerung, completing Sydney Symphony’s Ring Cycle.

The presentation of Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Ring Cycle in concert, commencing in 2023, has played to sold out audiences, standing ovations and 5-star reviews. A second, feature-length documentary film, Knowing the Score, showcasing Simone Young and her career was also internationally released in 2023.

In 2025 Simone Young was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sydney. Her many accolades also include the 2024 Conductor of the year (British Opera magazine), Honorary Member (Ehrenmitglied) of the Vienna State Opera, the 2019 European Cultural Prize Vienna, a Professorship at the Musikhochschule in Hamburg, Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Western Australia and New South Wales, Griffith University and Monash University, the Sir Bernard Heinze Award, the Goethe Institute Medal, the 2013 Helpmann Award for Best Individual Classical Music Performance and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France.

Gautier Capuçon is one of the foremost cello ambassadors in the 21st century. Performing worldwide with leading conductors and instrumentalists, he also created the Fondation Gautier Capuçon in January 2022, dedicated to supporting outstanding young musicians between the ages of 18 and 25 as they launch their careers, extending his strong commitment to education and mentorship. As of now, the Foundation is counting 45 laureates coming from all around the world, with pianists, violin, viola players and cellists.

Winner of numerous awards, Capuçon is celebrated for the depth and intensity of his interpretations, his dazzling virtuosity, and the rich, resonant sound.

In the summer of 2020, during the pandemic, Capuçon launched Un été en France, a musical journey that brought live performances to families across the country. He repeated the project in 2021, this time also featuring young instrumentalists and dancers in his concerts. To date, the initiative has gathered more than 175.000 people in audience, presented 92 concerts in 76 towns and villages, and showcased 72 emerging artists alongside him. Six documentaries have already been devoted to the tour, with an upcoming new one to be broadcast between Christmas and New Year 2026.

Recent orchestral highlights include performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker (Kirill Petrenko) in Berlin and on tour (starting with the Europakonzert from Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt), Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden (Finnegan Downie Dear, Andrés Orozco-Estrada at Silvesterkonzert, and Daniele Gatti), Vienna Philharmonic (Christian Thielemann), Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (Andris Nelsons), San Francisco Symphony (Simone Young), Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (Paavo Järvi), as well as appearances with the hr-Sinfonieorchester (Alain Altinoglu) at both the Dvo?ák Prague Festival’s Opening Concert and the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest.

Capuçon recently toured Europe with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lisa Batiashvili, as well as with Nikolay Lugansky. His chamber music partners have included Nicholas Angelich, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Frank Braley, Jérôme Ducros, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Hadelich, Leonidas Kavakos, Evgeny Kissin, Alexandre Malofeev, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Menahem Pressler, and Jérôme Ducros, with whom he’s been sharing the stage and recording for 30 years. He has also performed with the Artemis, Ébène, Hagen, and Modigliani Quartets, as well as toured with the Capucelli – a seven-cello ensemble he founded in 2015 with alumni of his Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle and joined later also by alumni of the FGC — through Europe and Taiwan.

In the 2026/27 season, Capuçon will tour with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Jaap van Zweden through Europe, as well as with Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (Andris Nelsons), Netherlands Philharmonic (Lorenzo Viotti) and Orchestre de Paris (Andrés Orozco-Estrada). Further
orchestral engagements include an appearance at the BBC Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Alain Altinoglu, followed by performances with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Mark Elder), Filarmonica della Scala (Riccardo Chailly), WDR- Sinfonieorchester (Marie Jacquot), Sydney Symphony Orchestra (Simone Young), Boston Symphony
Orchestra (Susanna Mälkki), National Symphony Orchestra (Chia-Hsuan Lin), and many others. Capuçon will also tour North America with Jean Yves-Thibaudet and Lisa Batiashvili, and Europe with Frank Braley – performing an all-Beethoven programme. He’ll also perform Beethoven trios with Evgeny Kissin and Maxim Vengerov at the Chicago Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall. Capuçon is also set to tour Europe with the Capucelli throughout the season.

Always eager to explore and expand the cello repertoire, Capuçon performs both great classics and new works each season. Current projects include music by Lera Auerbach, Karol Beffa, Esteban Benzecry, Nicola Campogrande, Qigang Chen, Bryce Dessner, Richard Dubugnon, Henri Dutilleux, Jérôme Ducros, Danny Elfman, Thierry Escaich, Joe Hisaishi, Philippe Manoury, Bruno Mantovani, Andrew Norman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Max Richter, Wolfgang Rihm, and Jörg Widmann.

An exclusive recording artist for Erato (Warner Music), Capuçon has a rich discography that has earned numerous awards. Following Intuition, his 2020 release Émotions (featuring works by Debussy, Schubert, Elgar and others) reached gold status in France, topping the charts for over 30 weeks and selling more than 100,000 copies worldwide. His next album, Sensations (2022), became the first classical recording to reach No.1 in France’s all-genre charts, followed by Destination Paris (2023). His most recent release (Autumn 2024) features Elgar and Walton concertos with Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra. Capuçon’s cello becomes the voice of the Earth in an inspired album of world premieres, Gaïa – released in concert with San Francisco Symphony Orchestra November 2025, and featuring works by Max Richter, Bryce Dessner, Ludovico Einaudi, Gabriela Montero, Joe Hisaishi, Nico Muhly, among others. Emblematic of his deep love for nature and our planet, he carried his cello to the Mont Blanc massif at 3,842 meters above sea level performing Sequence for Gaïa which can be seen in a stunning music video.

Earlier recordings include Shostakovich with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, Saint-Saëns with Lionel Bringuier and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the complete Beethoven Sonatas with Frank Braley, Schubert’s String Quintet with the Ébène Quartet, Intuition with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and Douglas Boyd, and live recordings with Martha Argerich, Renaud Capuçon, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Bernard Haitink. He has also recorded Beethoven’s Piano Trios with Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley, sonatas by Franck and Chopin with Yuja Wang, the solo album Souvenirs (Bach, Dutilleux, Kodály), and a special “Best Of” release for his 40th birthday.

Capuçon also appears on live DVDs, including Haydn’s Concerto No. 1 with the Berlin Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, and Brahms’s Double Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and Christian Thielemann.

Capuçon also serves as an ambassador of Orchestre à l’École, an association that introduces music into schools through three- to four-year learning cycles. Today, 1,630 school orchestras across 100 French departments involve 44,000 children, and more than 184,000 pupils have already benefited from this vital program.

From 2019 to 2025, he has hosted Les carnets de Gautier Capuçon on Radio Classique every weekday from 5–6 pm. A household name in France, he frequently appears on television and has been a juror on France 2’s Prodiges since its creation in 2014, a program that attracts more than three million viewers annually at Christmas.

Born in Chambéry, Capuçon began the cello at the age of four with Augustin Lefèbvre, later studying in Paris with Annie Cochet-Zakine and Philippe Muller, and in Vienna with Heinrich Schiff. Today, he collaborates with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Lionel Bringuier, Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, Paavo Järvi, Philippe Jordan, Cristian Măcelaru, Klaus Mäkelä, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Tugan Sokhiev and Lorenzo Viotti.