Featured posts
Anthony Marwood (Violin)
posted by Imogen Smart in Biographies on 3rd February 2010
click on the image for a larger version
Anthony Marwood was named Instrumentalist of the Year by the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2006. He is a frequent soloist with orchestras around the world, and in the next two seasons will make his debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the St Louis Symphony, the New Zealand Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony, and has reinvitations to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Bournemouth Symphony, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Thomas Ades, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Douglas Boyd.
Anthony also enjoys a flourishing career as a director, and last autumn completed his second 12-concert tour as soloist/director with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. He is looking forward to guest directing Les Violons du Roy in Canada, the Scottish Ensemble and at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne. Since January 2006 he has been Artistic Director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and is a regular collaborator with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (their first CD together winning high praise). His passion for theatre resulted in two UK tours with the Academy of a fully staged production of Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale, in which he acted the role of the Soldier as well as playing the violin part – his performance, directed by Lawrence Evans, was picked as one of the cultural highlights of the year by the Daily Telegraph.
He has had many works written for him, including Sally Beamish’s 1995 concerto, subsequently televised for BBC4 and recorded on the BIS label. In the 2009-10 season Anthony Marwood will premiere two new concertos written for him, one by American composer Steve Mackey (a concerto for violin and electric guitar, commissioned jointly by the ASMF and the ICO) and one from New Zealander Ross Harris, with the NZSO. Thomas Adès’s concerto “Concentric Paths”, which he premiered in September 2005 in Berlin and at the BBC Proms is the result of a fruitful musical partnership with the composer. He has since performed the work on numerous occasions giving the US premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the French premiere in Paris with the CBSO, and the Russian premiere in St Petersburg. His recording of the work on EMI, with the composer conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, received exceptional reviews and was picked as Gramophone Magazine’’s Recording of the Month. Adès and Marwood are touring a programme of the complete works of Stravinsky for violin and piano, a recording of which will be released on the Hyperion label in February 2010. With the cellist Steven Isserlis they will perform at Carnegie Hall in New York this March.
Anthony has made well over 30 recordings, and is a Hyperion Artist. Future plans include two concerto CDs for Hyperion in 2011.
He enjoys teaching and each summer attends the Yellow Barn Festival in Vermont, where students and faculty perform together in a rural setting.
He plays on a beautiful violin by Carlo Bergonzi (1736), kindly bought by a syndicate of purchasers.
To find out schedule and other information, please visit www.anthonymarwood.com.
Photo © Nigel Luckhurst/Lebrecht Music and Arts