Julie Moffat - soprano
The British soprano Julie Moffat’s wide repertoire extends from the baroque passions and oratorio through the classical and romantic periods to the very latest in contemporary music. She has given many premieres including Hans Zender's Shir hashirim with the composer conducting which she has also recorded, and subsequently performed in Freiburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, at the Salzburg Festival and the Concergebouw in Amsterdam, Requiem of Reconciliation with the International Bach-Akademie and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Helmuth Rilling, Georg Friedrich Haas's chamber opera Nacht at the Bregenz Festival, also recorded, Friedrich Cerha's Jahrelang ins Ungewisse hinab in Vienna with the composer conducting, Manzoni’s Trame d’ombre in a series of concerts featuring Maurizio Pollini at the Salzburg Festival, and Lyell Cresswell’s The Voice Inside and Stuart McRae’s Ancrene Wisse both with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. In 2000 she gave the premiere of a work written especially for her, Hans Zender’s Music to Hear with Klangforum Wien in Vienna, which she also recorded. The following year she performed the same work with the Munich Chamber Orchestra in Munich and Cologne, and with Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris. She performed the role of Karin in the British premiere of Act II of Gerald Barry’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant at the Huddersfield Festival.
She performs regularly with the Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien and has appeared with leading orchestras including the ÖRF, SWF and WDR Symphony Orchestras, Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and the Hallé Orchestra, and with conductors including Hans Zender, Michael Gielen, Friedrich Cerha, Helmuth Rilling, Thierry Fischer, David Shallon, Ingo Metzmacher, Reinbert de Leeuw and Kent Nagano. In recent seasons she has performed Carmina Burana with the Hallé Orchestra, Britten’s War Requiem with the Derby Bach Choir, Luigi Nono’s Il canto sospeso at La Scala, Milan, Zimmermann’s Omnia tempus habent with the SWF Orchester Baden-Baden, Boulez’s Improvisation sur Mallarmé II with Klangforum Wien, Webern songs with the Schoenberg Ensemble, Webern’s Cantata No 1 with the SWF Orchester in Freiburg and Stuttgart and Nono’s Como una ola de fuerza y luz in Torino.
Her many festival appearances include Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Bregenz, Berlin, Donaueschingen, Holland Festival, Venice Biennale and Brussels Ars Musica. She has performed Pierrot Lunaire at the Cheltenham Festival, the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival and in Kuala Lumpur, and Schoenberg’s String Quartet No 2 with the Vanbrugh Quartet at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. She performed the same work with the Auryn Quartet in Berlin.
She has broadcast for the BBC, Hessen, Bayern, Austria, Israel, Copenhagen, France and Milan radios and has made solo CD recordings with Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, the Südfunk Choir, the International Bach-Akademie of Stuttgart, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. She has recorded Stravinsky’s Threni with Robert Craft conducting the Philharmonia for Koch International. Her recording of works by Jean Barraqué with Klangforum Wien won the Grand Prix du Disques.
Some recent performances include Nono’s Il canto sospeso in Lucerne, Boulez’s Don from Pli selon pli in Stuttgart, Boulez’s Le soleil des eaux in Andrézieux-Bouthéon, Berio’s Epiphanies in Torino, Pintscher’s A Twilight Song with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall, London, and Jean Barraqué's Le temps restitué with the Schönberg Ensemble in the Concertgebouw.
Engagements in the current season and beyond include Varese’s Offrandes at the Salzburg Festival, Nono’s Il canto sospeso in Milan, Herbert Howell’s Hymnus Paridisi in Dublin, Zender’s Issei non kyo in Berlin and Zender’s O bosques - Oh Wälder in Munich.