Iain Burnside

Iain Burnside has an international career as a song and chamber pianist. He has worked with a broad roster of major singers: Dame Margaret Price, Rosa Feola, Ailish Tynan, Joyce DiDonato, Laurence Brownlee and Roderick Williams. He has recorded more than 60 CDs, often created around neglected composers, where his curatorial skills are displayed to the full. Recent concert highlights include a Rachmaninov Song Series at Wigmore Hall with outstanding Slavic singers, following acclaimed Delphian recordings of Rachmaninov and Medtner. Other Delphian collaborations range from Schubert Lieder to songs from Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. He has broadcast extensively on both radio and TV, notably as host of BBC R3’s acclaimed Voices series, for which he received a Sony radio award.

 

Research at Guildhall School enabled Iain to expand his concert work into hybrid forms of music theatre, creating innovative staged work around Brahms (Shining Armour), Wagner (The View from the Villa), Gurney (A Soldier and a Maker), Schubert (Why does the Queen die?) and Britten (Journeying Boys). He has coordinated and directed various themed inter-conservatoire projects, involving students from Paris, Dublin, Salzburg and New York.

Current Research activity include Curating Early Twentieth-Century Russian Song: Contextualising Rachmaninov and his Contemporaries and a series of life-writing projects featuring Whitman, Dickinson, Housman and Finzi.

 

In addition to a long association with Guildhall Iain is Visiting International Artist at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Competitions where he has served as jury member include Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels, Concours International de Montréal, Busoni and Honens piano competitions and Wigmore Hall International Song Competition. He is Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend and Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera, Surrey.