David Owen Norris

‘heavenly sounds – diabolical virtuosity. Don’t miss him.’

CD Compact, Spain 2004

‘a famous thinker/philosopher of the keyboard’

Seattle Times 2005

‘past praise .. scrupulous sensitivity’

Gramophone 2006

‘visionary musical leadership’

Classic FM Magazine 2007

‘quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world’

Globe & Mail, Toronto 2001

In 2008 David Owen Norris has been a featured artist in the Gilmore Festival in Michigan and in the English Music Festival in Dorchester, where he gave the premiere of his Piano Concerto, which will be repeated in Southampton in September. He conducted the second performance of his oratorio Prayerbook in April: his new radio-opera Pugwash walks the plank will be premiered in November. Since January he’s played piano concertos by Mozart, Horowitz, Bach and Mackenzie in Wroclaw, Belfast, Oxford, Southampton and Poole, and he’s given recitals from Edinburgh to Guernsey, including performances on Gustav Holst’s piano in Cheltenham, and in the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester.

His filmed tutorials on playing Chopin were posted on the BBC website, and he was a major contributor to Radio 3’s Chopin Weekend. His recordings of the piano concertos of Montague F. Phillips and the Jazz Concerto by Victor Hely-Hutchinson were released in March (‘the performance of a lifetime: Proms organisers take note’ Gramophone). His CDs of Karg-Elert’s fiendish piano transcription of Elgar’s Falstaff and his own transcriptions of the Pomp & Circumstance Marches, and song-cycles by the Northamptonshire composer Trevor Hold, recorded with the soprano Amanda Pitt and the baritone David Wilson-Johnson, will be released in the summer. In May he recorded the songs of Muriel Herbert with the tenor James Gilchrist.

In March, he recorded the audio guide for the Cobbe Collection of composer-related keyboard instruments at Hatchlands, playing the piano at which Chopin wrote his Op.55 Nocturnes, and pianos belonging to Dibdin, Cramer and Bizet. (Norris has recorded commercial CDs at Hatchlands on the Zumpe signed by JC Bach and the Broadwood signed by Elgar.) In February, Norris launched a wide-ranging project on Mendelssohn’s pianos which will result in a complete recording of the piano music.

David Owen Norris was Organ Scholar of Keble College, and left Oxford with a First and a Composition Scholarship to study in London and Paris. He was Repetiteur at the Royal Opera House, Harpist at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director of Festivals in Cardiff and Petworth, Chairman of the Steans Institute for Singers in Chicago, and the Gresham Professor of Music in the City of London. His many radio series have included The Works, But I know what I like and All the Rage, and he presented the drive-time show In Tune for several years. First and foremost he is a pianist, beginning as an accompanist to such artists as Dame Janet Baker, Jean-Pierre Rampal and Larry Adler. In 1991, after a worldwide search, the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival appointed him the first Gilmore Artist, a quadrennial award. His subsequent international solo career has included concertos with the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestras and the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston (amongst many other North American orchestras), the Philharmonia, the Academy of Ancient Music, and several of the BBC’s orchestras, including four appearances at the Proms: and solo recitals all over North America and Australia, and in every European country from Hungary westward. He is Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton, Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music, Educational Fellow of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford.