Jonathan Powell
Jonathan Powell's articles on many aspects of Russian Music appear in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, with the London Sinfonietta having performed his music, and his piano concerts having taken him around the world presenting programmes of impressively varied repertoire.
piano
To book Jonathan Powell, contact
Vicky Yannoula at:
vicky@akousonclassicalartists.com
Having concentrated on composition during the 1990s, Jonathan Powell established an international career as a soloist having studied with Sulamita Aronovsky and Denis Matthews. Over the last decade, solo recitals taken him to the Rachmaninoff Hall of the MGK, on a six-concert US tour, to Musica Sacra in Maastricht, the series Fundación BBVA in Bilbao, Musica Nova in Helsinki, two solo recitals at the Festival Radio France Montpellier, Borealis Festival in Bergen, the Raritäten der Klaviermusik am Schloss vor Husum, Vredenburg Muziekcentrum in Utrecht, and the Jewish Museum and Altes Rathaus in Vienna. His recent concerto appearances include Brahms’ 2nd (Slovak Philarmonic), Liszt’s Malédiction (in Kiev), Finnissy’s 2nd Concerto (Moscow) and Sørensen’s 2nd (with the Prague Philarmonia), Rachmaninoff’s 3rd and Chopin’s 2nd (provincial Ukraine). In recent years, he has broadcast for Radio France, Radio Netherlands, Radio Deutschland Kultur, the BBC and Czech Radio.
He is a passionate advocate of music from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially from Russia and eastern Europe, but is also a proponent of contemporary music, having premièred works by Hugues Dufourt, Claudio Ambrosini, Michael Finnissy and others. His repertoire also includes many of the staples of the 19th century (Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann etc). In 2009 he gave the first of many performances of the cycle of Scriabin’s 10 sonatas in single concerts. During 2013 he toured Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus and Albeniz’ Iberia, while in 2015 he gave numerous performances of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata and Reger’s Bach Variations.
Recent activities include a European tour featuring the complete piano works of Xenakis and, in 2017, Liszt’s Sonata, Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke and several performances of Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum. In 2018 he gave six performances of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues. He is a featured artist at the Jacqueline du Pré hall in Oxford, giving three annual concerts, as well as teaching and leading workshops for students. He has also appeared at the Indian Summer in Levoča Festival (Slovakia) every year since its inception in 2007, as recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestra. The first three months of the 2019-20 season saw him perform in the Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine, Paris, UK, Poland, Prague, Karlsruhe and the Elbphilarmonie in Hamburg.
Masterclasses, lecture-recitals and coaching have recently taken Jonathan Powell to the Janáček Academy (Brno), Oxford University, the Guildhall School and Music and Drama (London), the Royal Academy of Music (London), Akademie für Tonkunst (Darmstadt), Cornish College of Arts (Seattle), and Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium (Denmark). His articles on many aspects of Russian music appear in the New Grove Dictionary of Music. His compositions have been performed by the Arditti Quartet, the London Sinfonietta and Nicolas Hodges. He lives in southern Poland.