Haydn: Cello Concerto in D

Giovanni Sollima hails from Palermo. He is a composer and enjoys an international career as a solo cellist, with a very wide repertoire and an exceptional degree of curiosity for the unknown. This has led him to play all sorts of cross-over projects, combining classics and rock, or playing all types of music from around the Mediterranean. He has written music for acoustic and electric instruments, and he has written for film directors and choreographers such as Peter Greenaway, Bob Wilson, Peter Stein, John Turturro, and Carolyn Carlson. In the concert with the Concertgebouworkest Sollima plays a Francesco Ruggeri cello, built in Cremona in 1679.

Giovanni Antonini is a conductor and soloist on the recorder and baroque transverse flute. In 1985, along with Luca Pianca, he co-founded Il Giardino Armonico, a pioneering Italian early-music ensemble based in Milan, to play 17th- and 18th-century music on period instruments. Like Gardiner, Antonini is regarded as one of the leaders of the period instruments movement.