Thursday 20 October 2011
Richard Watkins – French Horn
Richard Watkins has rapidly become one of the most sought-after horn players of his generation and is well-known as a concerto soloist and chamber music player. He was Principal Horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra from 1985 until 1996, and is currently a member of the Nash Ensemble and a founder member of London Winds.
Richard Watkins has appeared at many of the world's most prestigious venues in the UK, Europe and the USA, and has worked with conductors such as Carlo-Maria Giulini, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Gianandrea Noseda, Andrew Davis, Vasily Petrenko and Mark Elder.
His extensive discography includes recordings of the Horn Concertos by Mozart (IMP), Malcolm Arnold (Conifer), Glière and Ethel Smyth (Chandos), as well as Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante (DG) and Poulenc's Chamber Music for Horn (Hyperion).
In recital, Richard Watkins regularly performs at the Wigmore Hall with singers such as John Mark Ainsley, Ian Bostridge and Mark Padmore, and with pianists Julius Drake, Barry Douglas, Roger Vignoles and Ian Brown.
Richard Watkins is at the forefront of promoting contemporary music for the horn. He has given premières of concertos by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Nigel Osborne, Magnus Lindberg, Dominic Muldowney, Nicola Lefanu, and Colin and David Matthews. Other premières have included James McMillan’s Quintet for Horn and Strings at the 2007 Cheltenham Festival, a Horn Trio by Huw Watkins at the Wigmore Hall in March 2009, ‘Bleak Moments’, Quintet for Horn and String Quartet, by Mark-Anthony Turnage, Colin Matthews’ ‘Time Stands Still’ for Horn, Violin and Piano at the 2006 Aldeburgh Festival as well as a performance of Colin Matthews’ Horn Concerto at the 2006 Proms with the Hallé and Mark Elder, a recording of which was released earlier this year to great critical acclaim.
Watkins also gave the première of Britten’s ‘In Memoriam Dennis Brain’ for four horns and strings culminating in a tribute at the 2007 Proms on the exact date of the 50th Anniversary of Brain’s death.
Richard Watkins is in great demand for teaching and masterclasses in Europe and the USA. He currently holds the Dennis Brain Chair of Horn at the Royal Academy of Music.
Julius Drake – Piano
The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and specialises in the field of chamber music, working with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc. He appears at all the major music centres: in recent seasons concerts have taken him to the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Salzburg, Schubertiade, and Tanglewood Music Festivals; to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, New York; the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Philarmonie, Cologne; the Châtelet and Musée de Louvre, Paris; the Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; and the Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms, London.
Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia from 2000 - 2003, Julius Drake was also musical director of Deborah Warner’s staging of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Vanished, touring to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam and New York. He is appointed artistic director of Leeds Lieder in 2009 and the Machynlleth Festival in Wales from 2009 - 2011.
Julius Drake’s passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for the Wigmore Hall, London, the BBC and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. A series of song recitals – Julius Drake and Friends – in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London, has featured recitals with many outstanding vocal artists including Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Ian Bostridge, Angelika Kirchschlager, Sergei Leiferkus, Felicity Lott, Katarina Karneus, Simon Keenlyside, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Christoph Pregardien, Amanda Roocroft, and Willard White.
Julius Drake is frequently invited to perform at international chamber music festivals – recently Kuhmo in Finland, Delft in the Netherlands, Oxford in England and West Cork in Ireland - while his instrumental duo with Nicholas Daniel has been described in The Independent newspaper as “one of the most satisfying in British chamber music: vital, thoughtful and confirmed in musical integrity of the highest order.”
From 2010 Julius Drake is appointed Professor at Graz University for Music and the Performing Arts in Austria and he regularly gives master classes, recently in Amsterdam, Brussels, Oxford, Paris,Vienna and at the Schubert Institut, Baden bei Wien.
Recordings include releases for Bis, Chandos, Eloquentia, EMI, Etcetera, Hyperion, Naxos, Onyx and Virgin and include Sibelius Songs and Grieg Songs with Katarina Karneus ( both Hyperion), French Sonatas with Nicholas Daniel (Virgin), Spanish Song with Joyce Didonato (Eloquentia), Mahler Songs and Tchaikovsky Songs with Christianne Stotijn (both Onyx) and Schumann Lieder with Alice Coote (EMI).
Live recordings from recitals at Wigmore Hall London for the ‘Wigmore Live’ label have included concerts with Lorraine Hunt Liebersen, Joyce Didonato, Christopher Maltman, Gerald Finley and Matthew Polenzani. He has made an award winning series of recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI, including discs of Schumann, Schubert, Henze, Britten, The English Songbook and La Bonne Chanson. His recent series of recordings with Gerald Finley for Hyperion – Ives, Barber, Schumann, Ravel and Britten – has been widely acclaimed and Barber Songs and then Schuman Heine Lieder have won both the 2008 and 2009 Gramophone Awards.
Recent and coming highlights in Julius Drake’s schedule include a special Birthday Concert for him hosted by the Wigmore Hall in London; Schumann duets and quartets with Röschmann, Kirchschlager, Bostridge, Quasthoff and Deutsch at the Schubertiade, and in Hamburg, Paris, London and Vienna; recitals in the USA, Canada and at the Edinburgh Festival Gerald Finley; the first recording in a series of seven for Hyperion of The Complete Songs of Liszt, with Matthew Polenzani; recitals at Carnegie Hall, New York, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Wigmore Hall, London with Alice Coote; a tour in Europe of Wolf’s Spanisches Liederbuch with Ian Bostridge and Angelika Kirchschlager; a recording of English songs for Harmonia Mundi with Bejun Mehta; a Beethoven/Schubert project in Aldeburgh, Lisbon and Luxembourg with among others the Belcea Quartet and Imogen Cooper; a recital in Istanbul with Joyce Didonato and tours in the USA with both Matthew Polenzani and Dorotea Röschmann.