Anthony Marwood - violin
In May 2006 Anthony Marwood was named Instrumentalist of the Year at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, the first string player to receive this honour in more than a decade, and confirming him as one of the most sought-after and versatile violinists of his generation.
Engagements in the 2006/7 season included a tour of Germany as soloist/director with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Barbican and the Edinburgh Festival, the London Philharmonic at the South Bank, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Paris, and the NDR Hamburg. Engagements in the current season and beyond include concertos with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Philharmonia, CBSO, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, Colorado Symphony and Warsaw Philharmonic, as well as a two US tours with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. He will return to the BBC Proms in September of this year.
In January 2006 he became Artistic Director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and of the Shannon International Music Festival. In summer 2006 he took part in a major tour as soloist/director with the Australian Chamber Orchestra – and will return there in 2009. He is a regular collaborator with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (their first CD together winning high praise), and in summer 2005 his passion for theatre resulted in a UK tour 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 2005 by the Daily Telegraph. The production was revived to great acclaim in November 2007.
He has had many works written for him, including Sally Beamish's 1995 concerto, subsequently televised for BBC4 and recorded on the BIS label. 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 been garnering extraordinary reviews and is Gramophone Magazine’s Recording of the Month in March 2008. Adès and Marwood are touring a programme of all Stravinsky's music for violin and piano which they will record later in 2008. In the 2009-10 season 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.
Anthony Marwood’s recordings include Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on BMG, but he also enjoys performing and recording more unusual works. He has made acclaimed recordings on the Hyperion label of sonata repertoire with the pianist Susan Tomes of Dvorak (Classic CD Award), Schumann (Gramophone Award nomination) and concertos by Stanford (Gramophone Award nomination), Coleridge-Taylor and Somervell, and with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, concertos by Kurt Weill and Peteris Vasks, “performed with blistering intensity and astonishing accuracy” BBC Radio 3 CD Review.
He is the violinist of the celebrated Florestan Trio (the first trio to win a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, in 2000) and he performs 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. The Florestan Trio also has its own Florestan Festival at Peasmarsh, an annual event in June.
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.