Fri, Aug 7, 2026
We start our 2026-27 season with four new players, including three former members of our Academy. Remarkably, one of them already participated in Concertgebouw Orchestra Young at fifteen years of age. Meanwhile, double bassist Théotime Voisin is stepping up to a principal position.
Violinist Valerie Schweighofer, violist Francisca Galante, cellist Pietro Silvestri and trumpeter Jonathan Romana have joined our orchestra. All three string players were members of the Academy of the Concertgebouw Orchestra during the 2024-25 season. This underlines the success of 25 years of talent development: with their arrival, the Concertgebouw Orchestra employs twenty-two former Academy members, five of whom — Valerie, Francisca, and Pietro as well as horn player Lou-Anne Dutreix and bassoonist Javier Sanz Pascual — hail from the very same Academy season!
It is also of note that Francisca previously served as principal viola in August 2019 during the inaugural edition of Concertgebouw Orchestra Young, our summer project for talented young musicians aged 14 to 17.
Read the joint interview from March 2025 with Francisca Galante and Felipe Manzano, who likewise progressed from Young 2019 to the Academy.
- Valerie Schweighofer – second violin
- Francisca Galante – viola
- Pietro Silvestri – cello
- Jonathan Romana – trumpet
Promoted
Double bassist Théotime Voisin, assistant principal double bass with the Concertgebouw Orchestra since 2016, has moved up to the second chair: as of 1 August, he assumes the role of principal double bass.