Born in Staffordshire, Lucy Crowe studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she has recently been appointed as a Fellow. She has established herself as one of the leading lyric sopranos of her generation.
Her operatic roles include Servilia (La clemenza di Tito) for the Metropolitan Opera, New York; Adina (L’elisir d’amore), Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), Gilda (Rigoletto) and Belinda (Dido and Aeneas) for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier) for the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich and Covent Garden; Gilda for the Deutsche Oper Berlin; Rosina (The Barber of Seville), Dona Isabel (The Indian Queen), Poppea (Agrippina) and Drusilla (The Coronation of Poppea) for English National Opera; Micaëla (Carmen), Merab (Saul), The Fairy Queen and the title role in The Cunning Little Vixen for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; and Dorinda (Orlando) in Lille, Paris and for the
Opéra de Dijon. She made her US Opera debut as Iole in Handel’s Hercules for the Chicago Lyric Opera and has since sung the role for the Canadian Opera Company.
On the concert platform she has worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Nézet-Séguin; the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Haïm, Oramo and Nelsons; the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Mackerras and Egarr; the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Mackerras and Nézet-Séguin; the Monteverdi Orchestra under Gardiner; and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Pappano.
Lucy’s recordings include Handel’s Il Pastor Fido; Handel and Vivaldi with La Nuova Musica under David Bates for Harmonia Mundi; Lutosławski with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner; Handel’s Alceste with Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company; Eccles’ The Judgement of Paris; and a solo Handel disc, Il Caro Sassone with Harry Bicket and the English Concert.
Baritone William Berger has distinguished himself internationally as a singer of the highest calibre, praised for his rich timbre and charismatic stage presence. He is a graduate and Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London and an alumnus of the Young Singers Programme at English National Opera.
William’s operatic career has led him to perform at the Liceu Barcelona, Opéra de Toulon, Lucerne Opera, Opera Vlaanderen, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Edinburgh International Festival. In concert he has performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Sadler’s Wells and Los Angeles Disney Concert Hall; with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Early Opera Company, Philharmonia Baroque San Francisco, Ulster Orchestra, Cape Town Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, English
Concert, Philharmonie Zuidnederland, La Nuova Musica, and the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias. His recital performances have include the Wigmore Hall, BeethovenHaus Bonn, Lucerne Festival, Oxford Lieder Festival and on tour in Germany with Julius Drake at the Munich Gasteig, Hamburg Laeiszhalle and Berlin Konzerthaus.
His extensive discography includes his debut album Insomnia: A Nocturnal Voyage in Song (with Iain Burnside, Delphian DCD34116); Hommage à Trois, a collection of arias by Mozart, Haydn and Cimarosa that was described by International Record Review as ‘one of the most delightful recital discs of the past year’; Handel’s Alexander’s Feast and The Triumph of Time and Truth (both with Ludus Baroque, Delphian DCD34094 and DCD34135), Samson and Dettingen Te Deum, as well as DVDs of Handel’s Admeto and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione de Poppea. William was the winner of the Recital Special Prize at the 2010 Ernst Haefliger Competition in Switzerland.
Interweaving roles as pianist and Sony Award-winning radio presenter with equal aplomb, Iain Burnside is also a master programmer with an instinct for the telling juxtaposition. His recordings straddle an exuberantly eclectic repertoire ranging from Schoenberg and Copland to Debussy and Judith Weir, with a special place reserved for the highways and byways of English song. For Delphian he has curated programmes of Parry, Martin Shaw and others with singers including Ailish Tynan, Sophie Bevan, Irene Drummond, Susan Bickley, Andrew Kennedy, Roderick Williams and William Berger. The three-disc Rachmaninov: Songs (DCD34127), with seven outstanding Russian singers, won widespread acclaim and was shortlisted for the Vocal award at the 2014 Gramophone Awards. 2015 sees the first of two Schubert discs (DCD34165 and
DCD34170), featuring Ailish Tynan and Roderick Williams respectively, while a Medtner project with Delphian is also forthcoming.
Burnside has devised and written a number of highly individual theatre pieces. Lads in their Hundreds, an exploration of war songs, played in London and at the Ludlow Weekend of English Song. A Soldier and a Maker, based on the life of Ivor Gurney, was premiered at the Barbican Centre and transferred to the Cheltenham Festival; a version for radio has been commissioned for the BBC’s World War One season. Journeying Boys was performed in November 2013 in Milton Court Theatre.
In demand as teacher and animateur, Burnside also works at the Royal Opera House and the National Opera Studio, and enjoys a close association with Rosenblatt Recitals. He is International Visiting Artist at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin.
Also available on Delphian
Also available on Delphian
Insomnia: a nocturnal voyage in song
La Fauvette Passerinette: a Messiaen premiere, with birds, landscapes & homages
William Berger baritone, Iain Burnside piano
Peter Hill
DCD34116
DCD34141
For his solo debut on disc, William Berger has devised an ingenious sequence of seventeen songs describing a sleepless night experienced by a man who reflects on his love for an unnamed woman. From Viennese classicism to fin-de-siècle Romanticism, shadowy English pastoral to the contemporary worlds of Richard Rodney Bennett and Raymond Yiu, this wide-ranging programme is brought to nuanced life by an outstanding young baritone, while the indefatigable Iain Burnside provides lucid and imaginative accompaniment. Together, their performances capture the full gamut of nocturnal emotions.
In 2012, leading pianist and Messiaen scholar Peter Hill made a remarkable discovery among the composer’s papers: several pages of tightly written manuscript from 1961, constituting a near-complete and hitherto unknown work for piano. Hill was able to fill in some missing dynamics and articulations by consulting Messiaen’s birdsong notebooks, and here sets this glittering addition to Messiaen’s piano output in the context both of the composer’s own earlier work and of music by the many younger composers on whom Messiaen was a profound influence – from Stockhausen and Takemitsu to George Benjamin, who like Hill himself worked closely with the composer in the years before his death.
‘plays out its chronological narrative … with logical and psychological inevitability. Berger sustains a magnetic affection throughout the varied sequence, aided by Burnside’s deft pianism’
‘A new Messiaen work may be the focus here, but this would be an outstanding recital even without that enticement … Hill’s poetry and sense of colour are stronger than ever’
– The Scotsman, July 2012
– BBC Music Magazine, October 2014, INSTRUMENTAL CHOICE
The Shadow Side: contemporary song from Scotland
Irene Drummond soprano, Iain Burnside piano
DCD34099
‘rewardingly substantial … [an] outstanding recital disc. The appeal is greatly enhanced by the exceptional quality of the recording’ – Gramophone, December 2014, EDITOR’S CHOICE
Also shortlisted at the 2015 Gramophone Awards
For many years Irene Drummond has been the leading exponent of contemporary song in Scotland. With her partner Iain Burnside – peerless in this music – she offers here a fascinating snapshot of her repertoire. From the rarefied sparseness of James MacMillan to the sustained luminosity of Paul Mealor and the emotionally charged dramatic outbursts of John McLeod, The Shadow Side explores a world of half-lights and brittle intensity.
‘… soprano Irene Drummond at her most breathtakingly stellar and seductive’
– The Herald, June 2011
‘Iain Burnside shares the credit for performances of total focus’
– BBC Music Magazine, October 2011
