Julius Drake, pianist

Julius Drake, described by The New Yorker magazine as the ‘collaborative pianist nonpareil’, lives in London and enjoys an international reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field, collaborating with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc. He appears regularly at all the major festivals and music centres: the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Schubertiade, and Salzburg Music Festivals; Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, New York; The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; the Philharmonie, Berlin; the Châtelet and Musée du Louvre, Paris; La Scala, Milan; Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid; Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; and Wigmore Hall and the BBC Proms, London. Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia from 2000 to 2003, Julius was also musi-cal director of Deborah Warner’s staging of Janáček’s ‘The Diary of One Who Disappeared’, which toured to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and New York. Since 2009, Julius has been Artistic Director of the Machynlleth Festival in Wales. Julius’ passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for Wigmore Hall, London; The Royal Concertge-bouw, Amsterdam; the 92nd Y, New York; and the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin. His annual se-ries of song recitals – Julius Drake and Friends – in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London, has featured recitals with many outstanding vocal artists including Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Ian Bostridge, Dame Sarah Connolly, Alice Coote, Lucy Crowe, Angelika Kirchschlager, Iestyn Davies, Veronique Gens, Sergei Leiferkus, Dame Felicity Lott, Simon Keenlyside, Chris-topher Maltman, Mark Padmore, and Sir Willard White. Julius is frequently invited to per-form at international chamber music festivals – most recently, Lockenhaus, Austria; West Cork, Ireland; Oxford, England; and Boswil, Switzerland. Julius holds a Professorship at Graz University in Austria for Music and the Performing Arts, where he has a class for song pia-nists. He is also a Professor of Collaborative Piano at the Guildhall School of Music in Lon-don. He is regularly invited to give masterclasses worldwide; recently in Aldeburgh, Brussels, Utrecht, Cincinnati, New York, Toronto,Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Vienna, and annually at the Schubert Institute in Baden bei Wien. Julius’ many recordings include a widely acclaimed se-ries with Gerald Finley for Hyperion Records (from which ‘Songs by Samuel Barber’, ‘Schu-mann: Dichterliebe & other Heine Settings’ and ‘Britten: Songs & Proverbs of William Blake’ won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards); award winning recordings with Ian Bostridge and Alice Coote for EMI; several recorded recitals for Wigmore Hall Live with art-ists including Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Christopher Maltman and Matthew Polenzani; recordings of French Sonatas for Virgin Classics with Nicholas Daniel; Kodaly and Schoeck cello and piano sonatas with Natalie Clein and Christian Poltéra for Hyperion Rec-ords and BIS Records; Tchaikovsky and Mahler songs with Christianne Stotijn for Onyx Clas-sics; English song with Bejun Mehta for Harmonia Mundi; and Schubert’s ‘Poetisches Tagebuch’ with Christoph Prégardien, which won the Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplat-tenkritik in 2016. Julius’ most recent CDs have been widely critically acclaimed and include Janáček’s ‘The Diary of One Who Disappeared’ with tenor Nicky Spence and mezzo-soprano Václava Housková, winner of a 2020 Gramophone Award and a 2020 BBC Music Magazine Award; ‘Paradise Lost’ with the soprano Anna Prohaska; and Volume 6 of the Liszt
Complete Songs (Hyperion Records) with the soprano Julia Kleiter. The second CD in this Liszt series with Angelika Kirchschlager won the BBC Music Magazine Award in 2012.

Concerts this season include three recitals in the series ‘Lied und Lyric’ in the Boulez Saal Ber-lin; recitals in Seuol and Daejeon with Ian Bostridge; in Barcelona and Wigmore Hall, London with Catriona Morrison; at the Schubertiadá Vilabertran with Julia Kleiter; at Middle Temple Hall, London, L’Athanée, Paris and the Schubertiade Festival, Austria with Christoph Prégar-dien; in Amsterdam and Cologne with Konstantin Krimmel; at the Konzerthaus, Vienna and Amici della Musica, Florence with Anna Prohaska; at the Janacek Festival in Brno with Nicky Spence; in Philadelphia, Santa Fe and Atlanta with Fleur Barron; and at Wigmore Hall, Schloss Elmau and the Prinzregententheater, Munich with Günther Groissböck.