Clemens Leske
Nicholas Mathew
With a repertoire of some thirty-five concerti, Clemens Leske has performed with the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, West Australian, Tasmanian and Queensland symphony orchestras and has played at venues in Spain, the United Kingdom, Singapore, New Zealand, Hungary and China. In May, 2005 he gave his London Royal Festival Hall debut, performing Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
The British pianist and musicologist Nicholas Mathew is Associate Professor and Weisman Schutt Chair in Music at the University of California at Berkeley, and joint leader of the piano program there. He has Photo: Bruce Hedge always divided his musical life between the contrasting joys of scholarship and performance. While a student at Oxford University, he studied piano performance concurrently at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with the Romanian virtuoso Carola Grindea. His formative years as a musician, however, came during his graduate studies at Cornell University in New York State, where he worked with the generation’s leading fortepianist Malcolm Bilson, and encountered the extraordinary range of historical keyboard instruments that have captivated him ever since.
Recent appearances include performances of Strauss’ Burlesque as well as Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Sydney Symphony under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Mozart’s K467 Concerto in C at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, both with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He performed with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra last year with Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with conductor Niicholas Milton and was also invited on a national tour in partnership with flautist Sir James Galway. Adam McMillan† Born in Brisbane, 21 year old pianist Adam McMillan is currently studying at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM). Adam began playing when he was four, and by age 16, Adam had performed the Bach Concerto in D minor with the Tagiev Chamber Orchestra in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Recent performances include playing in the 4MBS Festival of Classics ‘Beethoven Marathon’, performing as soloist with the Queensland Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra, and collaborating with other pianists in the Australian Piano Duo Festival. He has enjoyed performing and recording the works of emerging Australian composers, and has recorded a CD with cellist Elizabeth Hubbard that continues to raise money for the charity “HeartKids”.
For the past decade, he has aimed to evolve the aims and aesthetics of what was once the “period instrument movement” – away from prescriptive questions of “what was” towards an appreciation of the richness and plurality of new expressive choices that can be promoted by a knowledge of historical practices and a love of instruments in their myriad forms. He is the author of Political Beethoven and (with Benjamin Walton) The Invention of Beethoven and Rossini, as well as several scholarly articles, on Beethoven, Haydn, Rossini, and the history and theory of piano performance. Nicholas Mathew appears by arrangement with the ANU School of Music.
Daniel Pan
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