Julius Drake
pianist
© Marco Borggreve
The British pianist Julius Drake, a regular guest at festivals and leading concert halls around the world, including those in Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Salzburg, the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, La Scala Milan, the Wigmore Hall, the BBC Proms London, the Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre in New York is back in Frankfurt, where he has accompanied many singers, for this, Alice Coote's third recital. He has made recordings and given recitals with many of the world's leading singers, including Sir Thomas Allen, Joyce DiDonato, Gerald Finley, Simon Keenlyside, Christopher Maltman, Angelika Kirchschlager, Dame Felicity Lott, Anne Sofie von Otter, Matthew Polenzani and Christoph Prégardien. He organised his own series of recitals for the Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw and the BBC, and his series of recitals, »Julius Drake and Friends« in London's Middle Temple Hall is an annual event. Many of his recordings of Lieder, for Wigmore Live, EMI, Onyx and Hyperion have won prizes, including a Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and a German Recording critics award. He ran the Perth International Chamber Music Festival from 2000 - 2003 and the 2009 Leeds Lieder Festival, the year he started being artistic director of the Machynlleth Festival in Wales. He's a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and taught at the University for Music in Graz for 14 years. He started organising a »Lied and Lyric« series at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin in 2021. Engagements last season included recitals with Ludovic Tézier at La Scala Milan and the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, the world premiere of all of Gustav Mahler's Lieder in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and an evening of duets with Elisabeth Leonskaja at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg. This season he gives recitals with Günther Groissböck in Dortmund, the Wigmore and Carnegie halls, plays for a staged performance of Schubert's Winterreise with Ian Bostridge at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris (dir: Deborah Warner) and returns to the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Leeds Lieder Festival and Hungarian State Opera in Budapest.