Acclaimed as one of the greatest interpreters of the Classical and Romantic repertories alive today, Portuguese pianist Maria-João Pires is an artist who combines exquisite stylistic refinement with a serious effort to plumb the intellectual complexities and spiritual depths of music. Refusing to conform to the traditional image of a concert virtuoso, Pires emphasizes the spiritual dimensions of music, always searching for hidden meanings which may elude the analytical performer. In her performances of Romantic masters, particularly Chopin and Schumann, Pires masterfully reconciles her passionate experience of the music with an admirable appreciation for the inner logic of the work she is interpreting. Reflecting her vast emotional range, her tone, as critics have observed, encompasses a dizzying variety of intensities, from an almost imperceptible lightness to an imposing monumentality, with a rich scale of intervening nuances.

Pires made her London debut in 1986, and has since performed with the major European and American orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. An enormously successful recording artist, Pires records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon, and among her many critically acclaimed discs are recordings of Chopin's Nocturnes, Schubert's Impromptus, Mozart concertos with Claudio Abbado, and Mozart's complete sonatas, which received the Grand Prix du Disque.

Born in Belgrade in 1985, Miloš Popovič studied at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad with Biljana Gorunović then at the Conservatoire Royal, Brussels, with Yevgeny Moguilevsky, a collaboration that lasted more than ten years. Since 2014 he has worked closely with Maria João Pires and subsequently became an integral member of Mme Pires’s Partitura Project. He has also performed at many festivals including the Menuhin Gstaad Festival, Schubertiades Porrentruy, Menton, and Radio-France Montpellie Festival. Miloš has also worked with numerous orchestras including the English Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, the McGill Chamber Orchestra and Antwerp’s deFilharmonie under conductors including Augustin Dumay, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Isaac Karabtchevsky, Boris Brott and François Deppe.

This concert forms part of the Partitura Project, a movement founded by a collective of artists, including Maria João Pires, who question their role and responsibility - be it æsthetic, ethical, social, pedagogical or spiritual - in a society where some of the most fundamental human values seem in crisis. It is the group’s aim to enable an open dialogue between different genres of art and science, and to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of humans in their environment.