July 7th

New release! My third album of Sibelius, which I recorded at the Sibelius Museum in Turku, Finland last summer, was released today on Quartz and is available to order on Amazon, Presto Music, Apple Music etc. including streaming and downloads. 
Vol. 3 contains the ‘Florestan Suite’ JS82, Largo in A major JS117, Six Impromptus Op. 5, Eight Pieces Op. 99 and 10 Pieces Op. 58.

This has been such a memorable and rewarding project from start to finish, and special thanks to the Sibelius Museum, Turku, the Åbo University Foundation and Sibelius One UK for their generous support in making this recording possible, as well as to my wonderful recording producer Enno Måemets.

January 6th, 2023

Happy New Year! Looking forward to lots of exciting concerts, projects and new collaborations ahead in 2023! I was really thrilled to find a lovely review of the Wigmore Hall concert last November in the latest issue of International Piano Magazine, which is now available to read on the ‘Press’ page.

 

November 28th, 2022

Wigmore Hall recital on 25th November

It was really inspiring to perform at Wigmore Hall again for a wonderful audience last Friday, with a programme marking 200 years since Schubert’s ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ was composed. The concert also included the London Premiere of ‘Five Trees’ by David Matthews, in the presence of the composer, performed alongside the set of 5 Pieces Op. 75 ‘The Trees’ by Sibelius which inspired them.  A real privilege to play at the Wigmore again, and such a memorable experience all round. 

 

August 27th, 2022

Trip to Finland and recording at the Sibelius Museum in Turku

It was wonderful to record Vol. 3 of the solo piano music of Sibelius in the inspiring surroundings of the Sibelius Museum in the beautiful city of Turku. The new album will be released on the Quartz label in 2023. Following three days of recording sessions, I was thrilled to give an evening recital in the same venue including the Finnish Premiere of David Matthews’ ‘Five Trees’ and the Sibelius pieces I had recorded. After a very exciting week in Turku, I travelled on to Ainola where I was lucky enough to give a concert at Sibelius’s house on the composer’s Steinway!

 

 

April 5th, 2022

Praise for new album of Sibelius works for violin and piano with Fenella Humphreys.

The new disc, released in January on the Resonus Classics Label, was picked as ‘Chamber Choice’ in the March issue of BBC Music Magazine with a double 5-star review. It has also received critical praise in Gramophone Magazine as well as being featured on BBC Radio 3’s Saturday morning Record Review with Andrew MacGregor.

 

January 8th, 2022

New release! My album of Sibelius works for violin and piano with Fenella Humphreys is now available on the Resonus Classics label, either to download or as a CD. We are thrilled that the new recording is being featured on Scala Radio as ‘Album of the Weekend’!

December 5th, 2021

I’m delighted and honoured to have a Wigmore Hall recital in the diary for next year.
On 25th November 2022 I’ll be giving a lunchtime concert to mark 200 years since Schubert’s ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ was written. What a wonderful way of being able to celebrate this incredible piece – obviously I’m hugely looking forward to this! 

November 26th, 2021

An update on the new commission of a set of pieces from David Matthews inspired by British trees – I’m excited to be giving the first performance at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford in July 2022 (date TBC.) Plans are also in progress for a performance of the new work in Finland, at the Sibelius Museum in Turku. In both concerts, David’s new pieces will be performed alongside the set of Five Tree Pieces Op. 75 by Sibelius.

 

October 27th, 2021

Today I was honoured to give the long-delayed world premiere of Edwin Roxburgh’s ‘Dialogue and Toccata’ for piano duet with Waka Hasegawa at St James’s Piccadilly.
This brilliant new addition to the repertoire was completed during the first lockdown in April 2020 and commissioned with generous funding from the RVW Trust. 
The concert was arranged in association with the Park Lane Group Music Trust and was also live-streamed. It was wonderful to see so many friends in the audience in our first London recital for more than two years and to play on the beautiful Fazioli piano at SJP.

 

 

 

 

October 22nd, 2021

Very happy to announce that I have signed with Polyphony Arts for artist management starting from this month. I’m looking forward to working on new projects and collaborations with my artist manager, Nick Cutts and will keep posting updates about forthcoming concerts, commissions and recordings. Exciting times ahead!

 

 

September 3rd, 2021

Refreshed from a holiday in the Scottish Highlands, including a hike to Ben Nevis and some beautiful walks in the Cairngorms, I was thrilled to be performing for audiences again. It was a real pleasure to give the first concert in this season’s lunchtime series at Newport Cathedral on 21st August. Following on from my Scotland trip it seemed a fitting co-incidence to be performing Schubert’s ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ as well as two wonderful late Beethoven works, the E major Sonata Op. 109 and a selection from the Bagatelles Op. 126.

The following day, I joined the online faculty for the Chetham’s International Piano Summer School and had a hugely rewarding time working with students from the UK, Mauritius and Japan as well as enjoying the many livestreamed concerts and events taking place at Stoller Hall in Manchester. 

 

 

 

 

July 19, 2021

It was such a joy to perform for a live audience again last Wednesday, giving a recital of Grieg and Schumann on an 1864 Steinway as part of the Cobbe Collection Series at Hatchlands in Surrey. Afterwards, I was lucky enough to have the chance to play many of the historical keyboard instruments in the collection including Chopin’s Pleyel and his pupil Jane Stirling’s Erard. Certainly a day to remember!

July 12, 2021

The Sendesaal Bremen recital has been rescheduled for April 20th 2022, with a new programme of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. 

 

 

Bremen Sendesaal Recital 20th April – Postponed

Due to travel restrictions and quarantine regulations in the UK and Germany, my recital at the Sendesaal in Bremen has had to be postponed for the second time. This was also to have been a CD launch concert at the hall in which I made the Schumann recording a couple of years ago. Details of the rearranged concert date to follow soon!

 

 

November 9, 2020

 

 

It was wonderful to be able to make a CD recording with the violinist Fenella Humphreys last week at the beautiful Cedars Hall in Wells. Over two days we recorded five sets of pieces by Sibelius in addition to his youthful ‘Andante Cantabile in G major’ with our brilliant producer, Matthew Bennett and sound engineer Dave Rowell. This Sibelius recording project with Fenella had been several years in the planning and after two postponements we were all very relieved that it could finally go ahead in late-October. A truly inspiring experience, all the more keenly appreciated with so few concerts being able to go ahead this autumn.

 

May 1, 2020

After more than a month of lockdown measures and social-distancing, life has changed for everyone as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and tragic loss of life here in the UK and around the world.

This has put all the usual, day to day hopes and anxieties of a musician such as myself into clear perspective when there are far more important things to be concerned about than preparing for the next concert – whenever that may be.

That said, I feel really fortunate to be a pianist in these strange and challenging times because music has that special power to uplift, to absorb us and to communicate our innermost feelings. Fellow pianists have humorously pointed out that the situation of being at home working in virtual isolation is not so very different from what pianists generally do anyway. Similarly, my piano is a reassuring sight and always there for me despite becoming increasingly out of tune, but not unbearably so!

So it may seem like an unlikely time to be putting the finishing touches to a new website, but I was lucky in getting this project underway back in mid-February with the designer Jon Jacob – it seems like a different age when we met up at the South Bank Centre about a month before the lockdown to have an initial chat about the new site and put a plan into action.

I am delighted with the results and hugely grateful to Jon for completing this new site over the past few weeks – thankfully all achievable through working
from home.

In the meantime, I’ve been practising up programmes which may inevitably get postponed this summer but haven’t been quite yet, exploring more Sibelius (no surprises there) and getting adjusted to the world of online piano teaching via Zoom and Teams. A quick update about summer courses – the Benslow Music piano duet course with Waka Hasegawa has been postponed until 2021 but plans are being discussed for a possible online course next month, and a further announcement about the Wells International Summer School in late-July is expected at the end of next week.