The sixth of six 'petits concerts', curated by James Lisney, raising funds for musical/education charities (The Amber Trust). The title is taken from the annual series of recitals given by Charles-Valentin Alkan at the Erard showroom in Paris during the 1870s.
...impressionist and romantic (Conrad Williams piano)
...Richard Strauss’s melodrama after Tennyson’s Enoch Arden (James Lisney piano and narrator)
Conrad Williams was weaned in Winnipeg and lives in Willesden Green (mainly for the sake of alliteration). He read English and Law at Trinity, Cambridge, and qualified as a barrister before defecting to the creative realm as novelist and literary agent. He is the author of three novels published by Bloomsbury: Sex and Genius (“supremely intelligent and intense” Publishing news), Unfinished Business (“a superb writer” Miami Herald) and The Concert Pianist (“ Savagely acute…Would-be concert pianists should steel themselves before reading this book” Bryce Morrison, Gramophone), and he has penned sundry articles for Pianist Magazine.
As Head of Media at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, Conrad represents scriptwriters, directors and book-into-film rights, and he alternates a velvet glove editorial touch with the negotiator's iron fist.
Conrad triangulates the worldliness of agenting and the time-incinerating craft of writing with a passion for the piano. His collection of LPs and CDs boasts an insane 20 recordings of the Chopin Studies, endless B minor Sonatas, and a growing wedge of ‘Iberias’ - Spanish piano music being the latest craze. He has been honoured to perform on five occasions in Lucy Parham's celebrity amateur Coffee Concerts at King's Place.
James Lisney enjoys a rich musical life, moving seamlessly from concerto and recital soloist to chamber musician, song accompanist and pianist director. Initiatives, such as his Schubertreise series at London's SouthBank Centre, and his extensive Beethoven Project for the recording company Woodhouse Editions, provide a platform for his wide-ranging musical sympathies.
James Lisney made his Wigmore Hall debut in 1986 and early representation by the Young Concert Artists Trust in London led to a career that has taken him to many prestigious venues and gained invitations to appear with major orchestras. Highlights include residencies at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Carnegie Recital Hall in New York.
James Lisney's repertoire ranges from baroque masterpieces to music of the present day. In the past decade, the music of Schubert and Beethoven have been a central pre-occupation (in performance and in recordings) and he regularly presents cycles of the piano sonatas and relevant chamber music. His recordings (on Naxos, Bis, Somm, Olympia and Carlton) have gained the highest recommendations. Recent months have seen him performing Schubert cycles in the Oxford International Piano Series, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the first Schubert piano sonata cycles on the Indian subcontinent and his recital debut at the Prague Rudolfinum.