The National Youth Orchestra of Slovakia was founded in 2016 as an initiative of the Slovak Music Centre. Its goal is to support the education of the young generation of professional Slovak musicians and improve the quality of orchestral music in Slovakia. 60 young musicians aged 16 to 28, mostly students at Slovakia’s conservatories and music academies, meet for regular working phases with renowned conductors and soloists. In addition to the classical music canon, the orchestra is particularly keen to include contemporary Slovakian composers in its repertoire. The Slovak Youth Orchestra has participated in many Slovak festivals, for example Allegretto Žilina, the Music Summer in Nové Zámky, the Music Festival Piešťany, the Musical Spring Festival in Trenčín and the Cultural Summer in Banská Bystrica. After its debut in 2019, the Slovak Youth Orchestra will perform for the second time at Young Euro Classic this summer. 

Originally from the environs of Paris, Sophie Dervaux began her musical training playing guitar and clarinet, before discovering her passion for the bassoon in 2003. After studies in Versailles, Lyon and at the Hanns Eisler School in Berlin, her career took off like a comet: in 2013, the same year she won the ARD Competition in Munich, she was appointed principal contrabassoonist at the Berlin Philharmonic, moving on to Vienna after two years, where she continues to serve as principal bassoon of the Vienna Philharmonic. In parallel to her many solo engagements, the 34-year-old has begun to conduct more and more often. Several years ago, she gave her debut as a conductor with the Armenian Chamber Orchestra, followed by the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Munich Chamber Orchestra and other ensembles in Romania, Japan and in her French homeland. For her latest CD albums Bach-Haydn and Mozart-Hummel-Vanhal (both released in 2022), the musician performed as bassoonist and conductor. 

The 32-year-old Slovak trumpeter Stanislav Masaryk can already look back on an impressive career. At the age of 13, he enrolled as a junior student at the Bratislava Conservatory; at the age of 19, Masaryk was not only hired as a trumpeter in the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, but also at the National Theatre of Slovakia. The musician then became principal trumpet at the Prague National Theatre, before being appointed to his current position, principal trumpet at the Czech Philharmonic, the most renowned orchestra in the Czech Republic, in 2020. From 2009 to 2020, Stanislav Masaryk also regularly appeared with the Bratislava Hot Serenaders, a jazz orchestra. In 2023, the trumpeter presented his solo CD, postcards, featuring works by Paul Hindemith, Bohuslav Martinů, Henri Tomasi and other composers. As part of an exchange between the Czech Philharmonic and the Royal Academy of Music, Masaryk has given master classes in London several times.

The Slovak composer Vladislav Šarišský was born in Košice, then part of Czechoslovakia, in 1984. Thanks to his father, a graduate of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and his mother, a ballet teacher and arts manager, the young Vladislav received early encouragement in his artistic endeavours. At the age of 14, he began studying piano and composition at the conservatory in Košice; during subsequent years, the young musician mixed jazz, rock, pop and other genres and paid homage mainly to the ideals of the Fluxus movement in his artistic concepts, which veered between performance and happening. Later, Šarišský tried to sketch out his own personal identity in his musical expression, beginning to include classical forms as well. His catalogue of works includes not only two piano sonatas and two string quartets, but also DOR – Concerto for Piano and Orchestra as well as NUEN – Sonata for Large Orchestra, Piano and Soprano.