Gerald Finley, baritone, Julius Drake, piano
Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 7:30 PM, Embassy of Austria

The Canadian baritone Gerald Finley has become one of the leading singers and dramatic interpreters of his generation, with award-winning performances and recordings on CD and DVD with major labels and performing at the world’s major opera and concert venues in a wide variety of repertoire. His recent awards include Best Solo Vocal Recording 2008, for his disk of Songs by Samuel Barber, at the Classic FM Gramophone Awards. This follows the Editor’s Choice Award at the 2006 Classic FM Gramophone Awards. His active relationship with leading conductors including Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Alan Gilbert and Antonio Pappano has been part of a flourishing career.

In opera, Mr Finley has sung all the major baritone roles of Mozart. His Don Giovanni has been seen inNew York, London, Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, with further appearances to include Glyndebourne and Munich as well as Japan. As the Count in Figaro, his appearances include the Royal Opera Covent Garden (Best Opera DVD, Gramophone Awards 2008), Salzburg Festival, Paris, Amsterdam, with further appearances at the Metropolitan Opera New York. Mr Finley’s expanding repertoire includes critical successes as Eugene Onegin, and Yeletsky at Covent Garden, and as Onegin at English National Opera. His portrayal of Golaud in Pelleas et Melisande at Covent Garden, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, won him a nomination for 'Outstanding Achievement In Opera' at the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards. In contemporary opera, Mr Finley has excelled in creating leading roles, most notably J. Robert Oppenheimer in John Adam’s Doctor Atomic (New York Met, San Francisco, Chicago and Amsterdam). For creating the role of Harry Heegan in Mark Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie at ENO, he earned a nomination at the 2000 Olivier Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Opera and won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Singers. He took the lead role of Jaufré Rudel in Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin for the much-acclaimed premieres in Santa Fe, Paris and Helsinki. In addition, Mr Finley created the role of Mr. Fox in Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox in Los Angeles. At Glyndebourne, his roles have ranged from Figaro to Nick Shadow and Owen Wingrave.

This season, at the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Finley reprises his much acclaimed portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer in a new production of Doctor Atomic, which then receives its UK premiere later in the season with English National Opera. Also with the ENO, he takes the role of Captain Balstrode in Peter Grimes. Mr. Finley returns to the Royal Opera House for the role of Frank/Fritz in Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, and he concludes the season at the Salzburg Festival as Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro.

His concert work is equally prestigious, and he has featured in recordings of Haydn, Handel, Brahms and Mozart. In recent seasons, he has premiered new works for Baritone and Large Ensemble written by Mark Anthony Turnage called The Torn Fields and When I Woke (these available on the LPO Live label), as well as a new piece Reflections on L’amour de loin by Saariaho. He is a frequent guest of many orchestras throughout Europe and the US. Recently released are his recordings of Mozart’s Requiem and Handel's Messiah with Nikolaus Harnoncourt for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Britten’s War Requiem with the LPO and Kurt Masur for Chandos, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony with Bernard Haitink on the LSO Live label. His Chandos CD of Stanford’s Songs of the Sea received the Editor’s Choice Award at 2006 Classic FM Gramophone Awards.

Concert highlights this season include performances of Doctor Atomic with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano, Honegger’s Un cantate de noel and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols in Moscow with Vladimir Jurowski and the orchestra of the Bolshoi, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the Lucerne Festival with Bernard Haitink and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

As a recitalist, he works regularly with Julius Drake, appearing throughout Europe and North America, and is a frequent guest at the Wigmore Hall. Recital appearances have included Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco and at New York’s Carnegie-Zankel Hall, as well as the prestigious venues in Europe including Vienna, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Amsterdam and London ’s Wigmore Hall, where they will return later this season. Invitations by the Schwetzingen Festival and the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg for 2009 confirm Mr Finley’s reputation as one of the foremost recitalists today.

Mr Finley’s recent CD albums of Barber and Ives songs, in continuing partnership with Julius Drake on the Hyperion label, have been critically acclaimed. Songs by Samuel Barber won the Best Solo Vocal Recording category of the 2008 Classic FM Gramophone Awards, and the Charles Ives Songs Romanzo di Central Park was nominated in the same category. In 2006 and 2008, he was nominated “Artist of the Year”. At the 2008 Canadian Juno Awards he received two nominations in the 'Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral Performance' category, in a nod to his contribution to the CD Schubert Among Friends (Marquis Classics) along with the Songs by Samuel Barber. His disk of Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel (CBC Records) with pianist Stephen Ralls won the 1997 Juno Award.

Hyperion Records has recently released a CD of Dichterliebe and other Heine settings by Schumann, achieving much international critical success. He has also recently released a recording on the Wigmore Live label, the 25th of their series, of songs by Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rorem, which received a nomination at the 2009 BBC Music Magazine Awards. Further CD’s include Dido and Aeneas on the Chandos label, released in January 2009.

Film credits include Owen in Channel 4’s film of Britten’s Owen Wingrave, BBC2’s The Holocaust – a Music Memorial film, filmed at Auschwitz in 2004, and In Search of Mozart, by Seventh Art Productions. He also appears in the film Wonders are Many, a film of the making of the opera Doctor Atomic.

Gerald Finley began singing as a chorister in Ottawa, Canada, and completed his musical studies in the UK at the Royal College of Music, King’s College, Cambridge , and the National Opera Studio with the support of the Friends of Covent Garden, the Worshipful Company of Musicians, the Keith B. Poole Scholarship and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. He was a winner of Glyndebourne’s John Christie Award and is a Visiting Professor and Fellow of the Royal College of Music.

The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and specialises in the field of chamber music, working with many of the world’s leading vocal and instrumental artists, both in recital and on disc.

He appears at all the major music centres: in recent seasons concerts have regularly taken him to the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Salzburg, Schubertiade, and Tanglewood Festivals; to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, New York; the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; the Chatalet and Musée de Louvre, Paris; the Musikverein and the Konzerthaus, Vienna; and the Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms London.

Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia from 2000 – 2003, Julius Drake was also musical director in Deborah Warner’s staging of Janacek’s Diary of One who Vanished, touring to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam and New York. He is appointed artistic director of Leeds Lieder in 2009 and the Machynlleth Festival in Wales 2009 - 2011.

Julius Drake’s passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for the Wigmore Hall, London, the BBC and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. A series of song recitals - Julius Drake and Friends - in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London, has featured recitals with many outstanding artists including Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Ian Bostridge, Phillip Langridge, Angelika Kirchschlager, Sergei Leiferkus, Dame Felicity Lott, Katarina Karneus, Angelika Kirchschlager, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Christoph Pregardien, Amanda Roocroft, Jose Van Dam and Sir Willard White.

Julius Drake is also frequently invited to perform at international chamber music festivals such as Kuhmo in Finland, Delft in The Netherlands, Oxford in England and West Cork in Ireland, while his instrumental duo with Nicholas Daniel has been described in The Independent newspaper as “one of the most satisfying in British chamber music: vital, thoughtful and confirmed in musical integrity of the highest order.”

Julius Drake is a Professor at The Royal Academy of Music in London and visiting Professor at The Royal Northern College of Music. In addition he regularly gives masterclasses, most recently in Amsterdam, Brussels, Oxford, Paris, Vienna and at the Schubert Institute in Baden bei Wien. In 2009 he has been invited on to the jury of The Leeds International Piano Competition.

Recordings include French Mélodie with Hugues Cuenod (Chandos), French Oboe Sonatas with Nicholas Daniel (Virgin), Britten song with Derek Ragin (Etcetera), Schumann Lieder with Sophie Daneman (EMI), Gurney Songs with Paul Agnew (Hyperion), Sibelius Songs with Katarina Karneus (Hyperion), Shostakovitch Sonatas with Annette Bartholdy (Naxos), Mahler Lieder with Christianne Stotijn (Onyx) Spanish Song with Joyce Didonato (Eloquentia), Schoeck Sonatas with Christian Poltera (Bis), English Song with Andrew Kennedy (Altara) a ‘Wigmore Live’ recording with Christopher Maltman and Haydn and Schumann and Mahler Lieder with Alice Coote (EMI). He has made a series of award winning series of recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI, including Schumann, Schubert, Henze, Britten, The English Songbook and La Bonne Chanson.
His recent series of recordings with Gerald Finley for Hyperion - Ives, Barber and Schumann - have been much acclaimed and the Songs of Samuel Barber is winner of the 2008 Gramophone Award.

Highlights in the coming season include Schubert at Carnegie Hall, New York with Ian Bostridge; ‘Wigmore Live’ recording releases with Gerald Finley and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; Recitals in New York and London with Alice Coote; Grieg Songs for Hyperion with Katarina Karneus and Tchaikovsky songs for Onyx with Christianne Stotijn; recitals in Ulm and London with Diana Damrau and Schumann duets and quartets with Röschmann, Kirchschlager, Bostridge and Quasthoff at the Schubertiade in Austria and in Hamburg, London and Vienna.