Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Wednesday 19 February 2020 We regret that violinist Leila Josefowicz is unwell and has had to withdraw from this evening’s concert. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is very grateful to Daniel Pioro for stepping in at short notice.
DANIEL PIORO violin
© David James Grinly
Daniel Pioro is a soloist, collaborative artist, and advocate for new and experimental music. After making his debut at the BBC Proms in 2019, where his performance was described as ‘the most inventive and engaging’ by The Daily Telegraph, he continues to grow his international career. The 2019/20 season sees him give the world premiere of Tom Coult’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic and Ilan Volkov, and his debut at the Barbican performing an arrangement of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending for violin, cello, viola da gamba and organ as part of its Contemporary Music series. Together with Icelandic composer and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson, Daniel gives multiple electro-acoustic performances throughout the season, including his North American debut at the Big Ears Festival in 2020.
‘Physical movement, the written and spoken word, colour, sound in all its many forms … they feed into one another and become greater for it.’ Daniel Pioro
In 2015 Edmund Finnis wrote Elsewhere for Daniel, which was premiered at Southbank Centre’s first DEEP∞MINIMALISM festival. The piece is featured on the violinist’s debut album Dust, along with Valgeir Sigurðsson’s three-part work of the same name written in collaboration with Daniel and released in March 2019 on the Bedroom Community label. Daniel’s celebrated association with the composer and guitarist Jonny Greenwood led Greenwood to write and dedicate a new violin concerto, Horror vacui, for him. He premiered the piece to much acclaim at the 2019 BBC Proms with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Hugh Brunt. In September 2019, Daniel’s recording of Bach’s Partita No. 2 was the first release on Greenwood’s label, Octatonic Records. Other recent highlights have included Thomas Adès’s Violin Concerto (Concentric Paths) and Colin Matthews’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and The Lark Ascending with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Cheltenham Festival. Daniel has also performed Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and John Woolrich’s Capriccio for solo violin and strings with the Orchestra of St John’s Smith Square, and Jonny Greenwood’s Triple Concerto and Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 with the London Contemporary Orchestra. Daniel works closely with the acclaimed author Michael Morpurgo – a collaboration that has borne The Storyteller’s Ensemble, a group of musicians devoted to the written and spoken word.