Anthony Marwood - violin
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, the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and has re-invitations to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Bournemouth Symphony, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra at the Maribor Festival. He has worked with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Thomas Adès, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Douglas Boyd.
Anthony also enjoys a flourishing career as a director, and since January 2006 he has been Artistic Director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Last autumn he completed a second 12-concert tour as soloist/director with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and in the future will direct Les Violons du Roy in Canada, the Scottish Ensemble and the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne. He 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 premieres 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, has received outstanding reviews and was Gramophone Magazine’s Recording of the Month. Adès and Marwood are touring a programme of all Stravinsky's music for violin and piano, with a recording released on the Hyperion label in February 2010. With the cellist Steven Isserlis they will perform at Carnegie Hall in New York March 2010.
Anthony Marwood has made well over 30 recordings, and is a Hyperion Artist. These include sonata repertoire with the pianist Susan Tomes by Dvorak (Classic CD Award), Schumann (Gramophone Award nomination) and concertos by Stanford (Gramophone Award nomination), Coleridge-Taylor and Somervell, and Kurt Weill and Peteris Vasks, “performed with blistering intensity and astonishing accuracy” BBC Radio 3 CD Review. Future plans include concerto CDs by Britten and Schumann.
He is the violinist of the celebrated Florestan Trio (the first trio to win a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, in 2000) and has performed all over the world with his colleagues Richard Lester and Susan Tomes. They have recorded much of the mainstream trio repertoire on Hyperion, many of them becoming benchmark performances. He has embarked on a touring project with the pianist, Aleksander Madzar, which will culminate in a series of three concerts at the Wigmore Hall in 2010/11.
Anthony Marwood 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.