Hampstead Arts Festival - ADD EVENT

Simon Wallfisch

“There is no doubting the quality of Simon Wallfisch’s artistry... his ceaseless shifts in tone create characterisations of quite exceptional vividness..." Gramophone 

“A multi-talented musician of incredible versatility” (BBC Radio 3), Simon Wallfisch is one of Britain’s most sought after Baritones, at home on the opera and concert stage.

In 2017, Simon Wallfisch performed as soloist at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall with the Nash Ensemble live for BBC Radio 3, sang leading roles at the Nürnberg Staatsoper and recorded his third Song CD for Nimbus Records entitled: "Gesänge des Orients" to be released in July 2018.

Born in London into a musical family, Simon Wallfisch studied cello, voice and conducting at the Royal College of Music between 2000 and 2006.

During his studies in London, he was awarded several prizes including The Georg Solti Foundation, Emmy Destinn Foundation, Giuseppe Di Stefano Competition Sicily, The DAAD, Countess of Munster Trust, The English Speaking Union and the Royal Overseas League "Young Singer of Promise" 2005. 

In 2006 Wallfisch left London for studies in Berlin (Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik 2006-2007) and Leipzig (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy 2007-2009) During this time he appeared as guest artist in principal roles at the Leipzig Opera, Magdeburg Opera, Dessau Opera, Altenburg-Gera Opera, Potsdam Sans Souci Schlosstheater, and the Ludwigsberger Schloss Festspiele. 

Subsequently he was engaged at the International Opera Studio of the  Zurich Opera House (2009-2011) singing many roles on the main stage. Recent operatic roles include FIERAMOSCA in Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini (Staatsoper Nürnberg 2016) MARCELLO Puccini La Boheme (Teatro Verdi Casciana Terme, Pisa 2016) ESCAMILLO La Tragedie de Carmen (National Reis Opera, Holland 2013). PELLEAS and ALBERT (English Touring Opera 2015). 

Simon Wallfisch's numerous television broadcasts include as a conductor and solo cellist on BBC 2 in January 2015 performing for the International Holocaust Memorial Day, and has been featured artist on various documentaries for Arte and ZDF. Live performances and recordings of Simon Wallfisch have broadcast on BBC Radio 3, NDR2, Bayerische Rundfunk, Swiss Radio and France Musique. 

His growing number of recordings with regular duo partner Edward Rushton include Songs of Geoffrey Bush on Lyrita Records and French Songs on Nimbus Records, Gesänge des Orients 2018, Songs of Robin Holloway 2019. He will also be recording a new work by Thea Musgrave for Lyrita records in 2018, songs by Cyril Scott 2018, and songs by Max Kowalski 2019.

In international demand as recitalist, Simon is passionate about Lieder and Song, and his unique style of combining cello and voice has brought him to concert halls all over the world, including Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Oxford Lieder Festival, Jacqueline du Pré concert hall Oxford, The Purcell Room, Kings Place and the Royal Festival Hall. UK festivals include Leamington, Wimbledon, London Song Schubert Society of Great Britain, Allwyn Festival and many others. He is invited to festivals in Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Australia and Canada. Simon has collaborated with pianists and ensembles including The Nash Ensemble, Edward Rushton, Iain Farrington, Lada Valesova, Graham Johnson and Julius Drake. 

As Oratorio soloist, Simon has performed works from Bach to Janacek at the Bridgewater Hall Manchester, Cadogan Hall London, Thomas Kirche Leipzig and Berlin Philharmonie.This year, he sang Christmas Oratorio with the Brighton Early Music Festival. 

As educator and conductor, Simon is lecturer at the University of West London, worked extensively with Aldeburgh Young Musicians, adjudicated as external examiner at the Royal College of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire, Trinity School. He has given masterclasses at Jerusalem Music Centre in Israel, the Schwerin international Festival Verfemte Music where he gives masterclasses at the Schwerin Konservatorium and is Jury Member of Jeunesse Musicale. He will be music director of a summer music course focussing on repertoire performed in the Terezin Ghetto 1941-1944 at Labor Europa, Osnabrück, in 2018. 
​
He is a trustee of the International Centre for Supressed Music (ICSM) dedicated to research and performance of suppressed composers, notably those whose voices were silenced by the third Reich and whose legacies are only now slowly coming back into public spaces.

Norbert Meyn

German tenor Norbert Meyn is equally at home singing baroque, classical and contemporary music.

As a concert soloist he has appeared at the Barbican Hall, the South Bank Centre, St. John’s Smith Square and the Royal Albert Hall in London, also at Usher Hall in Edinburgh, the Halle International Handel Festival, the Utrecht Festival of Early Music, with the Salzburg Bach Choir and in the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, with conductors including Sir Roger Norrington, Howard Arman, Simon Halsey, Phillip Pickett and Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

Selected operatic roles are: Don Ottavio (Mozart, Don Giovanni), Almaviva (Rossini, Il Barbiere di Sevilla), Podesta (Mozart, La Finta Giadiniera), Don Giovanni (Gazzaniga, title role), Damon (Handel, Acis and Galathea), Magnus (Maxwell-Davies, The Martyrdom of St. Magnus) and Abaris (Rameau, Les Boreades). He also sang the role of Bernardo in a feature film of the Goethe-Singspiel Erwin und Elmire (Anna Amalia) by Michael Dominski (ZDF Theaterkanal 2010).

CD recordings include Bach cantatas for Soli Deo Gloria, Engel Lund’s Book of Folk Songs for Nimbus Records, Schubert Lieder with Eugene Asti for SFZ Music and Spiritual Songs by C.P.E. Bach for Toccata Classics.

He has also performed, toured and recorded extensively with ensembles like the New London Consort, European Voices, Le Concert d’Astree, the Choir of the Enlightenment, London Voices and Trinity Baroque.

Norbert Meyn was born in the German city of Weimar. After studying music and singing in Dresden, Riga and Weimar, he moved to the UK in 1997 to study at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Since 2001 Norbert Meyn has been a professor there, and since 2005 also at the Royal College of Music, where he teaches German Lieder classes. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

Gemma Rosefield

Winner of the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award at Wigmore Hall in 2007, Gemma Rosefield made her concerto debut at the age of sixteen, when she won First Prize in the European Music for Youth Competition in Oslo, Norway, playing a televised performance of the Saint-Saens Concerto with the Norwegian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Other numerous awards and prizes include the Premier Prix Maurice Ravel in France, the Vice-Principal’s Special Prize at the RAM, and the Gold Medal at the RNCM. 

Described by The Strad on her 2003 Wigmore Hall debut as ‘a mesmerising musical treasure’, by the London Evening Standard in 2005 as ‘a phenomenal talent’, and featured in BBC Music Magazine as ‘one to watch’ in 2007, Gemma has made her solo debut in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and in The Diligentia, The Hague, in the New Masters International Recital Series. She gave the highly successful Pierre Fournier Award recital in September 2008 at Wigmore Hall, and also the 2008 and 2009 Jacqueline du Pré Memorial Concerts at the same venue. She performs regularly on BBC Radio 3, including notably Michael Ellison’s Concerto for Cello and Turkish Instruments with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Gemma has played widely outside the UK, in the USA, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Kenya, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. In September she will be giving several performances at the Nuremberg Chamber Music Festival, some of which will be broadcast by Bavarian Radio.

In 2011, Hyperion released a CD of Gemma playing the Complete Works for Cello and Orchestra of Sir Charles Stanford with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Manze. BBC Music Magazine considered the Stanford Concerto to be ‘superbly played’ and Gramophone Magazine commented that Gemma ‘plays with disarming character and freshness; her technique too is enviably sure and tone beguilingly rounded’.

Gemma gives some 50 performances a year as cellist of Ensemble 360, Royal Philharmonic Society Medal Winners, 2013, whose performances are described by the Independent as ‘brimming with body and soul, with passion, vitality and virtuosity, whose performances never cease to amaze’. She is also cellist of the Leonore Piano Trio, with whom she has toured recently in Italy and New Zealand, including a broadcast performance in the New Zealand Parliament. In 2014, Hyperion released the premiere CD of the Trio, of the two Piano Trios by Arensky. The Observer described their performances as ‘revelatory’ with ‘sumptuous breadth and beguiling warmth’. The Gramophone commented that the Trio played ‘with truly glorious affection’ and that ‘it is hard to imagine playing of a greater intensity’. This CD was BBC Radio3 disc of the week. The Trio recently performed the 2014 Jacqueline du Pré Memorial Concert at Wigmore Hall. Gemma is planning, with the Leonore Piano Trio, to embark in 2015 on a project to perform all the works by Beethoven for piano trio, violin and piano, and cello and piano, including at Kings Place, London.

In 2014, Gemma gave a Sunday Morning Concert at Wigmore Hall with Tim Horton, and she performed the premiere of a new work for Cello and Choir by Cecilia McDowall at Westminster Abbey. She has recently returned from Tallinn, where she played the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the Estonian National Orchestra and Vello Pähn. In May Gemma performed the Elgar Cello Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Christopher Warren-Green and in August, she gave the UK Premiere of Concello, for Cello and Orchestra, by Polish composer Maciej Zielinski at the Presteigne Festival.    

Gemma studied with David Strange at the RAM and with Ralph Kirshbaum at the RNCM. She has also studied with Johannes Goritzki, Gary Hoffman (Les Dix Stages de Perfectionnement, the Paris Conservatoire), Bernard Greenhouse and Zara Nelsova. Gemma has performed with eminent musicians such as György Pauk, Menahem Pressler, Julius Drake, and Stephen Kovacevich. She has a deep interest in contemporary music, and works have been written for her by David Matthews, Cecilia McDowall, James Francis Brown, Julian Dawes, Rhian Samuel, David Knotts and Michael Kamen.

Gemma plays on a cello made in Naples in 1704 by Alessandro Gagliano, formerly owned and played by the Prince Regent. 

Danny Driver

The enthusiasm and appreciation of audiences and critics around the world has cemented Danny Driver’s international reputation as a versatile and creative pianist of sophistication, interpretative insight and musical depth. His recordings have earned three Gramophone Award nominations, Limelight Magazine’s Instrumental Recording of the Year 2014, and recent selection in the New York Times’ 25 Best Classical Records of 2017.

Solo recital invitations bring Driver to concert halls across Europe, Asia and North America.  Recent highlights have included the Southbank International Piano Series and frequent recitals at Wigmore Hall, as well as Music Toronto, the Salle Bourgie in Montreal, and several performances of Ligeti’s Piano Études interlaced with Debussy’s complete Images across the USA and in Osaka, Japan.

Concerto engagements have taken Driver to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Minnesota Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and Uppsala Kammarorkest among many others.  In the UK his ongoing collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has included performances at London’s Cadogan Hall and at the BBC Proms, under conductors including Charles Dutoit, Alexander Shelley, and Mario Venzago.

As an artist who also deeply values ensemble collaboration, Driver has takes part in festivals such as O/Modernt, Bard Music Festival, Bath Mozartfest, Lammermuir, Ryedale, Australian Chamber Music Festival, and London Piano Festival, and maintains long-standing partnerships with violinist Chloë Hanslip, cellist Oliver Coates, and baritone Christian Immler.  Recent projects have included a complete Beethoven Violin Sonata cycle (recorded live for Rubicon Classics), song recitals in Europe and Canada, and performances of works by Adès and Feldman for cello and piano at the Southbank Centre and at King’s Place.

In a decade-long relationship with the prestigious Hyperion Records label, Driver has produced an acclaimed solo discography that includes C P E Bach, Handel, York Bowen, Balakirev, Schumann, and Amy Beach.  He teaches a small class of advanced pianists at the Royal College of Music, where he was appointed Professor of Piano in 2016.

Christopher Gould

Christopher Gould read music at Clare College, Cambridge before taking up a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music to study accompaniment with John Streets, Malcolm Martineau and Gareth Hancock, supported by The Countess of Munster Musical Trust. On graduating he was awarded the Her Royal Princess Alice’s Prize for outstanding contribution to the Royal Academy of Music and in 2001 he was made an Associate. He was the first young pianist to receive an award from The Geoffrey Parsons Trust in 1996; this was followed by the first prize in the two most prestigious accompaniment competitions: the Gerald Moore Award (1998) and the Wigmore International Song Competition (2001).

Christopher divides his time between a busy recital career and freelance vocal coaching, working as pianist and coach at the Royal Opera House for the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and on several international summer schools. In the UK he has performed with such artists as Sarah Walker, Ann Murray, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Roderick Williams and Geraldine McGreevy at the Wigmore Hall, St Johns Smith Square, the Purcell Room and on BBC Radio 3. Concerts abroad have included recitals at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Opera House in Lille and in Italy, Israel and Japan. Recital projects include a tour of the UK with bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams performing Winterreise in a multimedia presentation for Opera North.

Christopher’s discography includes an English Song disc, The Water is Wide, with mezzo-soprano Diana Moore, Who are these children?, a recording of Britten songs for BIS records with tenor Daniel Norman, and a CD of the Britten Canticles for Stone records. His most recent disc with Daniel Norman has just been released: Sonnets by Britten and Liszt with Daniel Norman. Future projects include recitals with Geraldine McGreevy (www.themyriadsong.com), and a disc of new songs by Richard Sisson with Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Roderick Williams and James Oxley.

Martin Behrman

Martin studied Drama & Screen at the University of Manchester before going on to complete his acting training at Drama Centre London, part of the University of the Arts. He has since gone on to work on a variety of productions at The National Theatre, in the West End and across both television and film.
 
Selected Theatre Credits
The Mousetrap (West End), The Motherf**ker With The Hat (National Theatre), Rechnitz (Aya Theatre), Summit Conference (Aya Theatre), Men Without Shadows (Finborough Theatre), Roberto Zucco (Contact Theatre Manchester), Rogues and Vagabonds (JW3), Spunk (Latitude Festival), Stars (Arcola Theatre), The Endings (Pleasance Courtyard & Theatre 503), Everweather (Pleasance Courtyard & Theatre 503)
 
Television
Holby City (BBC), Guilt (Lionsgate Television), I Live With Models (Comedy Central), Cuckoo (BBC), Obsession: Dark Desires (Discovery Channel), Miranda (BBC), Gormenghast (BBC)
 
Film
Angel Has Fallen (Millenium Films)