Jonathan Nott and Pierre-Laurent Aimard 

This approach owes much to Nott's decades-long involvement with modern music. He was music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, founded by Pierre Boulez in Paris, and chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, with whom he premiered works by Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Anyone, the internationally sought-after conductor believes, can learn to appreciate the novel frequencies of contemporary music. Jonathan Nott is Music Director of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, also working as a guest conductor with many more of the world's leading symphony orchestras. He has appeared regularly with the Berliner Philharmoniker since 2001.

During this time, he took part in numerous world premieres and established his reputation as one of the ‘leading interpreters’ (Olivier Messiaen) of contemporary music. However, the repertoire of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods is also of great importance to Aimard, as his benchmark recordings of Bach, Mozart and Liszt clearly demonstrate. He has worked closely with numerous important composers, including György Ligeti, whose complete piano works he has recorded. Pierre-Laurent Aimard has performed worldwide under the baton of conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sir Simon Rattle and Vladimir Jurowski, and he has worked as a curator, soloist and conductor at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Cité de la Musique in Paris and the Southbank Centre in London. Pierre-Laurent Aimard has worked closely with the Berliner Philharmoniker since 2000.

In collaboration with various orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, and under the direction of conductors such as James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle and others, the Ernst Senff Choir has made numerous recordings, some of which have won awards. Its repertoire ranges from the 17th to the 21st century, and the size of the ensemble varies from 20 to 120 singers, subject to requirement. Members of the Ernst Senff Choir frequently join the choirs of the Komische Oper and the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with whom they collaborate closely, for reinforcement. Concert tours have taken the ensemble to numerous German cities as well as Austria, Spain and Israel. Since 2009, the choir has been directed by Steffen Schubert.