David Geringas

As one of the world's great cellists, David Geringas is a virtuoso who mastered the great works of Beethoven, Bach and Rachmaninov and championed contemporary, avant-garde composers including Sofia Gubaidulina and Peteris Vasks.

Born in Lithuania, he was a protégé of the legendary Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and studied under him at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1960s before winning the gold medal at the esteemed International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1970. After settling in West Germany, his early albums for Eurodisk included aggressive, fast-paced takes on Vivaldi, Haydn and Tchaikovsky, but it was in the 1980s that he played with the world's leading orchestras and perfected his elegant touch and instinctive feel for the music.

Highlights among his vast discography of over 100 albums includes '12 Cello Concertos of Luigi Boccherini' (which won France's prestigious Grand Prix du Disque Award in 1988) and 'Musique de Chambre' in 1994 which took on the chamber music of 20th century French composer Henri Dutilleux and featured the baritone vocals of Gilles Cachemaille. He was also chief conductor for the Kyuso Philharmonic Orchestra from 2005-2008 and led other leading orchestras around the world, mentored a new generation of artists as a professor at the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin and the Chigiana Music Academy in Siena and mastered the ancient bowed stringed instrument the baryton, closely associated with Haydn.