Tutors
Piers Lane
“No praise could be high enough for Piers Lane whose playing throughout is of a superb musical intelligence, sensitivity, and scintillating brilliance.” Bryce Morrison, Gramophone
London-based Australian pianist Piers Lane has a worldwide reputation as an engaging, searching and highly versatile performer, at home equally in solo, chamber and concerto repertoire. Five times soloist at the BBC Proms, his wide-ranging concerto repertoire exceeds one hundred works and has led to engagements with many of the world’s great orchestras, working recently with conductors like Sir Andrew Davis, Vassily Sinaisky, Gerard Schwartz and Brett Dean.Festival appearances have included Aldeburgh, Bard, Bath Mostly Mozart, Bergen, Cheltenham, Como Autumn Music, Prague Spring, Rockport, La Roque d’Anthéron, Ruhr Klavierfestival, Schloss vor Husum, Seattle and the Chopin festivals in Warsaw, Duszniki-Zdrój, Mallorca and Paris.
He has performed in over forty countries, highlights including annual Wigmore Hall solo recitals and concerto performances in London’s major halls and at Carnegie Hall, including a performance of the mighty Busoni Concerto. In 2015 Piers Lane
was appointed Artistic Director of the Sydney International Piano Competition and is responsible for initiatives like the 2021 Online Piano Competition, the Piano Lovers’ Competition for amateur Australian pianists and Composing the Future, a competition to help Australian composers and pianists during covid times.
He is a popular judge at international piano competitions and has also judged the Menuhin International Violin Competition and the Michael Hill International Violin Competition. His extensive collaborations with violinist Tasmin Little CBE, actress Dame Patricia Routledge (in the Dame Myra Hess exploration Admission: One Shilling) and the Goldner String Quartet have been of major importance. He is a member of the recently formed chamber group Amici della Musica. In recent seasons Piers Lane performed three concerti at Carnegie Hall, including the New York premiere of Ferdinand Ries’s Piano Concerto No.8 for the debut of The Orchestra Now (TŌN), and world premieres of Carl Vine’s second Piano Concerto and Double Piano Concerto (with Kathryn Stott) Implacable Gifts, both written for him.
His extensive discography for Hyperion includes much admired recordings of rare romantic piano concertos, the complete Malcolm Williamson piano concertos, the complete Preludes and Etudes by Scriabin, transcriptions of Bach and Strauss, along with complete collections of Concert Etudes by Saint-Saëns, Moscheles and Henselt, and transcriptions by Grainger. He has also recorded eleven volumes of piano quintets with the Goldner String Quartet for Hyperion, many cds with Tasmin Little for Chandos, further solo and chamber cds for EMI, Phillips, Dutton, Unicorn Kanchana and Mozart Concertos for ABC Classics. Recent releases include a Hyperion followup to the popular ‘Piers Goes to Town’ and awaiting release is a disc of Russian variations.
Piers Lane was Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music from 2007 to 2017, and from 2006 to 2013 directed the annual Myra Hess Day at the National Gallery in London. He has written and presented over 100 programmes for BBC Radio 3, including the 54-part series The Piano and has premiered works by such composers as Brett Dean, Colin Matthews, Richard Mills, Carl Vine and Malcolm Williamson. In the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Birthday Honours he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished services to the arts.
In 1994 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was a professor from 1989 to 2007. Piers holds Honorary Doctorates from two Australian Universities: Griffith and James Cook. In 2022 he was presented with the coveted Sir Bernard Heinz Award for services to music in Australia.
Simon Callaghan
Simon Callaghan performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, in parallel with a highly successful career as a recording artist. A favourite performer at the internationally-
renowned Husum Festival of Piano Rarities in Germany, Callaghan’s recent sell-out concert was praised by VAN Magazine as a “cleverly curated recital full of discoveries” and by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “technically brilliant”. Callaghan has developed a wide following and appears on a regular basis in the UK’s major concert halls, and on tours to Asia, North America and Europe. Recital partners have included Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Nicholas Daniel, Adrian Brendel, Feng Ning, Samuel West, Prunella Scales and Timothy West. BBC Young Musician of the Year Finalist Coco Tomita and Callaghan have a successful duo partnership which saw their first record released in 2022 on Orchid Classics. He is also a founding member of the London Piano Quartet, joining colleagues from the renowned Piatti Quartet to showcase the repertoire for piano quartet with a particular focus on revivifying works that have fallen into obscurity.
Simon Callaghan’s distinguished and eclectic discography includes recordings for Hyperion, Nimbus and Lyrita. He has a strong profile on BBC Radio3 and on a variety of streaming platforms, his most recent single on Apple Music with Coco Tomita surpassing 1 million streams in the first month of its release. He is a strong social media enthusiast, using it as a form of promotion for classical music in general but seeing it as a particular tool in his advocacy of the rare and unexplored.
Callaghan’s broad repertoire encompasses the standard works of the 19th and 20th centuries and increasingly concentrates on much that is rare and unexplored, examples including Bernhard Scholz, Josef Rheinberger and Carl Reinecke. A cornerstone of his work is his commitment to British music, and he has recently begun a series on Lyrita, recording world premieres of British concertos with Martyn Brabbins and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Callaghan has also made first recordings of the complete piano music by Rebecca Clarke, George Dyson and William Busch. By the end of 2023, he will also have recorded four albums for Hyperion’s celebrated The Romantic Piano Concerto series. His first disc for Hyperion, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, formed part of his PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music and was praised by BBC Radio 3’s Andrew McGregor: “I have nothing but praise for the performances… impressive pianism”.
Callaghan launched a comprehensive Poulenc project for Nimbus Records in 2019 and recorded L’histoire du Babar with actor Miriam Margolyes. The album received five stars from The Independent, reviewer Michael Church: “here, thanks to Harry Potter actor Miriam Margolyes’s artistry and Simon Callaghan’s excellent pianism, is Poulenc’s delightful musical response. And as I listened to this recording, I found the original drawings reappearing in my mind with all their detail intact – extraordinary. It lasts just 30 minutes, but my god does it resonate.” Simon Callaghan’s reputation and experience in chamber music led to his appointment as Artistic Director at London’s celebrated Conway Hall, only the sixth incumbent since the founding of the series in 1887. Callaghan is collaborating with Roger Vignoles, one of the most distinguished piano accompanists of our time, on a new song recital element for the series in 2023/24. He was elected a Steinway Artist in 2012.
