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The Moscow Soloists ensemble was founded by violist and conductor Yuri Bashmet in 1986. In 1992 the ensemble was completely revamped, taking in graduates and postgraduates of the Moscow Conservatoire. It made its debut on 19 May 1992 at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. Two days later it gave its first performance abroad, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. 

The ensemble has given concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Barbican Hall in London, the Tivoli in Copenhagen, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Sydney Opera House, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire.

The ensemble takes part in the Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Mstislav Rostropovich Festival in Evian, Sony Classical sponsored concerts at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, Semaines musicales de Tours, Elba Isola Musicale d'Europa, December Nights, Prestige de la Musique at the Salle Pleyel, the World Chamber Orchestras Festival in Omsk and festivals in Ravenna, Montreux, Bath, Sydney, Qabala and Moscow. 

Since 2008 the ensemble takes part in the Sochi Winter Festival, of which Yuri Bashmet is Artistic Director. The Moscow Soloists take part in Bashmet’s Moscow International Viola Competition and his festivals in Yaroslavl, Khabarovsk, Rostov-on-Don, Minsk and the Seychelles. In January 2013 the ensemble appeared at a festival commemorating the maestro’s sixtieth birthday. 

The ensemble’s concerts are frequently broadcast and recorded by the world’s leading broadcasting companies, among them the BBC, Bayerische Rundfunk, Radio France and NHK. The orchestra has performed with Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Natalia Gutman, Viktor Tretyakov, Gidon Kremer, Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Sarah Chang, Shlomo Mintz, Barbara Hendricks, James Galway, Lynn Harrell, Mario Brunello, Thomas Quasthoff, Anna Netrebko, Olga Borodina, Jessye Norman and Yefim Bronfman. 

The repertoire of the Moscow Soloists includes over three hundred and fifty masterpieces of world classics and rarely performed works, ranging from Bach and Mozart to Schnittke and Denisov as well as music by Kancheli, Gubaidulina and other contemporary composers. 

In 2008 the Moscow Soloists received a Grammy award for its recording of music by Stravinsky and Prokofiev. In 1994, 2006 and 2009 the ensemble was a Grammy award nominee. 

In 2007, to mark fifteen years since it was founded, the ensemble undertook a tour of Russia, during which it gave forty-two concerts in thirty-nine towns and cities. In Ufa the musicians performed their one thousandth concert, while their concert in Severomorsk took place on the cruiser Peter the Great. The ensemble undertook an even larger tour to mark its twentieth anniversary, giving over eighty concerts in thirty countries. 

In the autumn of 2009 the Moscow Soloists undertook a tour of Russian towns and cities during which they performed on unique instruments crafted by Antonio Stradivari from the Russian State Collection of Prized Musical Instruments. In the 2013/14 season the ensemble’s musicians undertook a similar tour of Europe’s capital cities. 

In 2014 the ensemble took part in the cultural programme of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

Yuri Bashmet is one of the most outstanding musicians of the present day. He studied music at the Moscow State Conservatoire under Vadim Borisovsky and Fyodor Druzhinin. Under the latter, Yuri Bashmet trained and held an assistantship at the Moscow Conservatoire (1976–1978). The start of his concert activities is connected with a tour to Germany by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, founded by Rudolf Barshai (1976). Since 1978, Yuri Bashmet has taught at the Moscow Conservatoire, as a lecturer (1988), and later as a professor (1996). Starting in 1980, Yuri Bashmet has regularly given master classes in Japan, Europe, America and Hong Kong. His students, several of whom have gone on to become prize-winners at international competitions, perform with the world’s greatest orchestras.

In 1986 Yuri Bashmet formed the chamber orchestra Moscow Soloists. Later, several musicians took the decision to remain in France, while Yuri Bashmet abandoned leadership of the orchestra, which soon after ceased to exist. In 1992 Yuri Bashmet founded a new ensemble using the old name, its members the most talented young musicians of Russia, graduates and post-graduate students of the Moscow Conservatoire. 

In 1996 Yuri Bashmet established the Experimental Viola Faculty at the Moscow Conservatoire, where in addition to solo viola works the repertoire was expanded to include viola roles in chamber, opera and symphony music as well as a strong focus on the history of performing styles from the past and present. 

The geography of the musician’s appearances is vast: it includes the finest concert halls of Europe, the USA, Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. For the first time in world performing practice, Yuri Bashmet gave solo viola concerts in such venues as Carnegie Hall (New York), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Barbican Hall (London), Berliner Philharmoniker, La Scala (Milan), the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire and the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. 

His solo concerts and ensemble appearances with other outstanding performers never fail to pack halls and rouse lively interest. Musicians with whom Yuri Bashmet has performed include Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Gidon Kremer, Marta Argerich, Oleg Kagan, Natalia Gutman, Viktor Tretyakov, Rafael Kubelik, Seiji Ozawa, Valery Gergiev, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Yehudi Menuhin, Charles Dutoit, Neville Marriner, Paul Sacher, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kurt Masur, Bernard Haitink, Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Yuri Temirkanov and Nikolaus Harnoncourt to name but a few. 

Yuri Bashmet’s concert programs are unusually varied and include music from various styles and eras. Many contemporary composers have dedicated or specially written works for him. These include Schnittke’s concerto, Monologue and Concert for Three (dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, Yuri Bashmet and Gidon Kremer), concerti by Gubaidulina, Аlexander Tchaikovsky, Balakauskas, Eshpai and Ruders, Golovin’s Sonata Breve, Raskatov’s viola sonata and Kancheli’s Liturgy and Styx. 

Yuri Bashmet is the founder and jury chair of Russia’s only International Viola Competition (Moscow) as well as president of the International Lionel Tertis Viola Competition in the United Kingdom. He is the recipient of various awards and regalia from Russia as well as from other nations. In 1995, he received the Sonnings Musikfond Prize, one of the most prestigious in the world, which was conferred in Copenhagen. Previous recipients of this award include Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Arthur Rubinstein, Dmitry Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sviatoslav Richter and Gidon Kremer.

Andrei Poskrobko was born in Minsk. At the age of sixteen he became a diploma-recipient at the International Karol Lipiński Violin Competition in Poland. Graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire (Irina Bochkova’s class) and completed an assistantship and traineeship there. Prize-winner at numerous international competitions. Has toured to towns and cities in Russia, Great Britain, Germany, The Netherlands and France. He is currently a leader of the Moscow Soloists chamber ensemble. Has taken part in major international festivals of chamber music in Paris, Tours, Rouen and La Havre (France), Kreuth, Rolandseck and Elmau (Germany), Venice and Ravenna (Italy), Bath and London (Great Britain), Prague (Czech Republic) and Kraków (Poland).

Yaroslav Timofeev is a musicologist, lecturer, music critic, presenter, and concert host. Having graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, he has been a prize-winner of international piano, composing and church bellringing competitions. In 2014, Yaroslav defended his Ph. D. thesis titled Stravinsky and “Khovanshina” in Sergei Diaghilev’s version: an attempt of historical research and source study. In 2015, he got the 1st degree Resonance award for Russian Young Musical Critics at the Diaghilev Festival. 

Since 2011, Yaroslav Timofeev has been a music reviewer authoring over 750 articles for leading Russian media, such as Izvestia, Kommersant, Russia Beyond the Headlines newspapers; The New Times, Music Academy, Musical Life magazines; Colta.ru portal; and Arzamas project, among others. He has also been a script-writer and editor of the Absolute Pitch and Artificial selection shows on the Kultura TV channel. In 2014–2015, he was an editor with the Culture Division of Izvestia newspaper. In 2009–2015, he headed the Musicology Section of MolOt (Junior Department of the Russian Composers Union). Since 2018, he has been the Chief Editor with the Musical Academy Magazine.

Yaroslav Timofeev has been a Jury member and an Expert Council member of the Golden Mask National Theatre Award. As a musical consultant, he was involved in the staging of the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. He has been working at the Moscow Philharmonic Society since 2010, presenting concerts of the project ‘Mom, I'm a Melomaniac’ since the 2017/18 season and being a permanent co-author and co-host of the ‘Music Language’ project since 2018/19. He also gives pre-concert lectures in Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov Concert Halls. In spring 2020, he hosted several online concerts of the Armchair Concerts series. 

Yaroslav has been a pianist with OQJAV indie group since 2017. As part of the group, he was awarded the Mikael Tariverdiev Prize for the Best Film Soundtrack at the Kinotavr festival (2020).