Cellist Antonio Meneses is widely heard as a concerto soloist but is perhaps most highly regarded as a chamber music player. For the last ten years of existence of the famed Beaux Arts Trio, Meneses was its cellist.

Meneses (in full Antonio Meneses Neto) was born in Recife, Brazil, on August 23, 1957. Meneses grew up in a musical family; his father was first hornist at the Rio de Janeiro Opera. He took up the cello at age ten. A chance meeting with cellist-conductor Antonio Janigro led to an invitation to participate in the latter’s classes in Düsseldorf and Stuttgart, Germany, and by 1977, Meneses had taken first prize at the ARD International Competition in Munich. Still wider attention followed after Meneses won first prize and the gold medal at the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Meneses has appeared as a soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras. He often performs with the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, among other top European ensembles, and he has had a major presence in the Western hemisphere as well, appearing with the New York Philharmonic and the National Symphony, and in venues across his native South America. Meneses’ reputation as a chamber music player is perhaps even higher than that which he has attained through his solo work. For the last ten years of the existence of the Beaux Arts Trio, from 1998 to 2008, he was the group’s cellist. His other chamber music partners are a top-level group, including pianists Menahem Pressler and Maria João Pires; with the latter, he has toured widely.