Catriona Morison mezzo-soprano; Julius Drake piano
Sunday 22 May 2022, 1pm (doors open 12.45)
at Razumovsky Academy 56 College Road London NW105ET
A dry run / dress rehearsal for the artists’ BBC Radio 3 live broadcast from Wigmore Hall the next day.
Suggested donation from £10 per person
All proceeds from this season’s events to benefit The Razumovsky Trust’s HELP UKRAINE Appeal
For further details and booking please contact [email protected]
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Dein blaues Auge hält so still Op. 59 No. 8
Die Mainacht Op. 43 No. 2
Mädchenlied Op. 107 No. 5
Meine Liebe ist grün Op. 63 No. 5
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
6 Gedichte von N Lenau und Requiem Op. 90
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Sea Pictures Op. 37
The artists:
Scottish-German mezzo-soprano Catriona Morison came to the attention of a wider audience in 2017 when she won the Main Prize as well as sharing the Song Prize of the internationally renowned BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. At that time she was an ensemble member of the Wuppertal Opera for two seasons (2016-2018), where she added a variety of roles to her repertoire, including Nicklausse (Les contes d’Hoffmann), Charlotte (Werther), Hänsel (Hansel und Gretel), Maddalena (Rigoletto), Little Arab (Juliette) Princess Clarice (The Love for Three Oranges) and Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro). Guest engagements in opera have taken her to the Edinburgh International Festival, Cologne Opera, Bergen National Opera and the National Theater Weimar, among others. In 2015 she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival under Franz Welser-Möst as a member of the Young Singers Project, and in the same year she sang at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. In May 2021, she returns to Wuppertal Opera in a new production of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos under Patrick Hahn. She will also make her debut at the Hamburg State Opera. In the autumn of 2023, she will make a guest appearance as Meg Page in a new production of Falstaff in Bordeaux. Her recent success and debut as Der Komponist in Louisa Muller’s semi-staged production of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Edinburgh International Festival under Lothar Koenigs gained her lauded reviews.
On the concert platform, Catriona Morison made her debut at the BBC Proms in summer 2019, performing Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Elim Chan. She also sang the world premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s This Frame is Part of the Painting, a work commissioned for her, also at the BBC Proms. In 2021/22 the artist continues to be in demand internationally: with Berlioz ‘Les nuits d’été’ in Granada, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, with the Verdi Requiem in Hamburg, for the first time with Mahler’s Third Symphony in Kassel and Berlin, with the Mozart Requiem in Porto, with Bach’s ‘Christmas Oratorio’ in Vienna and Madrid, with the Beethoven 9th Symphony in Tokyo, with Mahler’s Second Symphony in Hamburg and Hong Kong, with Bach’s St. John Passion in Amsterdam and Mahler’s ‘Kindertotenlieder’ in Tenerife.
Song is of particular importance to Catriona Morison. She has been a guest at the Wigmore Hall, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Leeds Lieder Festival. In September 2021 she performed with Malcolm Martineau at the Lammermuir Festival and the Lausitz Festival, and further recitals are scheduled in Oxford and Glasgow (with Malcolm Martineau), London and Barcelona (with Julius Drake), at the Schubertiade in Vilabertran (with Ammiel Bushakevitz), and at the Heidelberger Frühling as well as in Ingolstadt (duo recitals with Katharina Konradi, accompanied by Joseph Middleton). Her first solo song CD with Malcolm Martineau was released in January 2021 on Linn Records.
Catriona Morison was a BBC New Generation Artist program artist and was awarded an Honorary Professorship from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) in 2017. She studied at the RCS in Glasgow, the Universität der Künste in Berlin and the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar.
The pianist Julius Drake 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. The New Yorker has described him as the “collaborative pianist nonpareil”. He appears regularly at all the major music centres and festivals: the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Schubertiade, and Salzburg Music Festivals; Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center New York; The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Philharmonie, Berlin; the Châtelet and Musée du Louvre Paris; La Scala, Milan and Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid; Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; and 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. Since 2009 he has been Artistic Director of the Machynlleth Festival in Wales. Julius Drake’s passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for Wigmore Hall, London, the BBC and The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. His annual 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 Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Ian Bostridge, Angelika Kirchschlager, Iestyn Davies, Veronique Gens, Sergei Leiferkus, Dame Felicity Lott, Simon Keenlyside, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Christoph Prégardien, Amanda Roocroft and Sir Willard White. Julius Drake is frequently invited to perform at international chamber music festivals – most recently, Lockenhaus in Austria; West Cork in Ireland; Oxford in England; Boswil in Switzerland and Delft in the Netherlands. Julius Drake holds a professorship at Graz University for Music and the Performing Arts in Austria, where he has a class for song pianists, and is professor of collaborative piano at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He is regularly invited to give master classes worldwide; recently in Aldeburgh, Brussels, Utrecht, Cincinnati, New York, Toronto, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Vienna, and at the Schubert Institute in Baden bei Wien. Julius Drake’s many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion, from which the Barber Songs, Schumann Heine Lieder and Britten Songs and Proverbs won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards; award winning recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI; several recitals for the Wigmore Live label, with among others Alice Coote, Ian Bostridge, Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Christopher Maltman and Matthew Polenzani; recordings French Sonatas for Virgin Classics with Nicholas Daniel; of Kodaly and Schoeck sonatas with the cellists Natalie Clein and Christian Poltéra for the Hyperion and Bis labels; Tchaikovsky and Mahler with Christianne Stotijn for Onyx; English song with Bejun Mehta for Harmonia Mundi; and Schubert’s ‘Poetisches Tagebuch’ with Christoph Prégardien, which won the Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2016. Julius Drake’s most recent CDs have been widely critically acclaimed and include Janacek’s ‘Diary of One who Disappeared’ with the Scottish tenor Nicky Spence (Hyperion), winner of a 2020 Gramophone Award and a 2020 BBC Music Magazine Award; ‘Paradise Lost’ (Alpha) with the Austrian soprano Anna Prohaska; and Vol. 6 of the Liszt Complete Songs (Hyperion) with the German soprano Julia Kleiter. The second CD in this Liszt series with Angelika Kirchschlager won the BBC Music Magazine Award in 2012. Concerts in the current and coming seasons include a series to celebrate the Beethoven anniversary at the 92nd St Y in New York, a Mahler series at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and a two-season series at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Other highlights include recitals at La Scala, Milan with Aleksandra Kurzak, at Wigmore Hall with Alice Coote, in Barcelona with Sarah Connolly, at the Schubertiade, Austria with Christoph Prégardien and Ian Bostridge, tours in Europe with Anna Prohaska and Eva-Maria Westbroek, and recitals at the 2021 Salzburg Festival and Edinburgh Festival with Gerald Finley.