Founder Klara Min plots a culture-and-business platform, with an AI project planned for next year's Cannes editionThis year's Classical Bridge International Music Festival turns its founding idea —connection — into something the audience can watch unfold onstage. Cellist Mischa Maisky will perform alongside his son and daughter, and Geneva-born violist Lyda Chen will watch her teenage son make his Korean debut."I'll have the privilege to listen to my own son perform for the first time in Korea. It's his debut," said Chen, the daughter of pianist Martha Argerich. The festival, she added, is "that bridge for our different generations."Now in its sixth edition, the festival will feature a total of 21 artists across seven performances from June 4-12 across the Seoul Arts Center, Lotte Concert Hall and Goyang Aram Nuri. Founder and artistic director Klara Min said the throughline is connection — between generations, between cultures, and between music and other fields."Rather than simply holding concert after concert, I was thinking about connection," she said.The lineup pairs veteran masters with a younger cohort — the generational mix at the core of Min's programming. This year's artists include pianist Mikhail Pletnev and violinist Augustin Dumay, alongside rising performers Gautier Capucon, Daniel Lozakovich and Edgar Moreau.The program builds from solo recitals through chamber music to an orchestral finale: Pletnev conducts the Rachmaninoff International Orchestra in its Korean debut on June 11 and 12, pairing Schumann's Violin Concerto with Beethoven's Triple Concerto and giving the Korean premiere of his own orchestral suite, "Rachmaniniana."The generational connection extends beyond the festival itself. At the press conference, Chen disclosed a family first: She will soon conduct her mother, Martha Argerich, and her son, David Chen, in Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos — a three-generation performance the family has never attempted."Some very iconic, wonderful musicians play with their sons and daughters, but how many can play with their grandchildren?" she said.The premiere is set for Taiwan, and Argerich is also due in Korea this year at Min's invitation.Maisky, who first performed in Korea nearly 40 years ago, opens the festival Thursday alongside his own children — violinist Sascha Maisky and pianist Lily Maisky — in a Schubert program arranged for cello and piano and Brahms' Piano Trio No. 1. The Maisky concert will take place at the Seoul Arts Center where his pupil cellist Chang Han-na has recently taken a role as the new president.Maisky, who has known Chang since she was about 9, welcomed her new challenge."Han-na is probably the most remarkable talent I ever encountered," he said, calling her "amazingly multitalented and unbelievably devoted to whatever she does."He added that he hopes she keeps performing even as she takes on the venue's leadership: "I still hope to have a chance to play with her as a conductor — and maybe one day still as a cellist."For Min, assembling those families and peers comes down to more than pedigree. Ability matters most, she said, but so does "an open heart toward one another, and genuineness," since chamber music falls apart if players carry preconceptions about each other.She does not treat the artists as business contacts, she said, but as friends in the broadest sense."We're all children in music together," she said.The connection is also geographic. Launched in New York in 2018, Classical Bridge has since traveled to Bordeaux in France, as well as Seoul and Paris, and Min said she sees little reason to tie it to any one city."The whole world is connected as one now," she said, describing it as "one unified platform."This year's Seoul edition coincides with the 140th anniversary of Korea-France diplomatic relations, and is backed by the French Embassy, before the festival moves to Cannes in 2027.Min wants the festival to become more than a concert series — a "platform for culture" that folds in business alongside the arts. That ambition peaks at Cannes, which she called a "mega launch" pairing performances with a two-day business summit and the debut of an AI project she said she is developing with Apple. The goal is to close the gap between what audiences hear and what they see."What you hear is very sophisticated music, but what you see is almost a two-dimensional photograph," she said. The music itself, she stressed, stays untouched. "Music has its own truth — that's why it's been here for so long," she said. "We're not trying to change the form of music itself, but we have to change the communication to the audience." From left: Cellist Mischa Maisky, artistic director and pianist Klara Min and violist Lyda Chen pose during a press conference for the 2026 Classical Bridge International Music Festival at the Shilla Seoul hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, Tuesday. (Yonhap) From left: Cellist Mischa Maisky, artistic director and pianist Klara Min and violist Lyda Chen participate in a press conference for the 2026 Classical Bridge International Music Festival at the Shilla Seoul hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, Tuesday. (Yonhap) From left: Cellist Mischa Maisky, artistic director and pianist Klara Min and violist Lyda Chen pose during a press conference for the 2026 Classical Bridge International Music Festival at the Shilla Seoul hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, Tuesday. (Yonhap) From left: Cellist Mischa Maisky, artistic director and pianist Klara Min and violist Lyda Chen pose during a press conference for the 2026 Classical Bridge International Music Festival at the Shilla Seoul hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, Tuesday. (Yonhap) From left: Cellist Mischa Maisky, artistic director and pianist Klara Min and violist Lyda Chen pose during a press conference for the 2026 Classical Bridge International Music Festival at the Shilla Seoul hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, Tuesday. (Classical Bridge) From left: Cellist Mischa Maisky, artistic director and pianist Klara Min and violist Lyda Chen pose during a press conference for the 2026 Classical Bridge International Music Festival at the Shilla Seoul hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, Tuesday. (Classical Bridge)