BARRY DOUGLAS
PIANOArtistic Director – Camerata Ireland
Artistic Director – Clandeboye Festival
BARRY DOUGLAS
PIANO
Artistic Director –
Camerata Ireland
Artistic Director –
Clandeboye Festival
ABOUT
Barry Douglas has established a major international career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, Moscow. As Artistic Director of Camerata Ireland, the only all-Ireland orchestra and the Clandeboye Festival, he continues to celebrate his Irish heritage whilst also maintaining a busy international touring schedule.
Highlights from last season include a major UK tour with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and appearances with the Warsaw Philharmonic and Orchestre National de Lille. In recent seasons he has performed with a list of orchestras that includes the London Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Moscow State Symphony, Russian National, Vancouver and Colorado Symphonies, and the Halle Orchestra.
Barry marked the 30th anniversary of his Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition win with full Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto cycles with the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin and the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast. Also noted for his promotion of contemporary repertoire, he performed the premiere of Kevin Volans’ fourth piano concerto with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the European premiere of the Penderecki Piano Concerto.
A highly sought-after recitalist and chamber musician, he has given performances across the globe from Royal Albert Hall, Barbican and Wigmore Hall and the Verbier Festival to the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, Grand Theatre in Shanghai and other cities in China.
He has previously given concerts with the BBC Scottish Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Singapore Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Staatskapelle Halle, Orchestre National de France, Seattle Symphony, Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestras, among others.
Barry is an exclusive Chandos recording artist. He recently completed a six-album recording of the full works for solo piano of Brahms. International Record Review wrote that “this is indeed Brahms playing of the utmost integrity and authority… this cycle looks set to become a benchmark version.” His current recording projects focus on the solo piano works of Schubert and Tchaikovsky. Also with Chandos Barry is exploring Irish folk music through his own arrangements, working with ancient melodies through to pieces by contemporary song writers.
In 1999 Barry Douglas founded the chamber orchestra Camerata Ireland to celebrate and nurture the very best of young musicians from both Northern and the Republic of Ireland. In addition to striving for musical excellence, one of the orchestra’s aims is to further the peace process in Ireland by promoting dialogue and collaboration through its musical education programmes. Barry regularly tours with Camerata Ireland throughout the world. Highlights of past seasons were Camerata Ireland’s debut at the BBC Proms in London and a world premiere of a new cantata commissioned by The Honourable The Irish Society, “At Sixes and Sevens”, alongside the London Symphony Orchestra to celebrate Derry-Londonderry becoming City of Culture 2013.
In January 2021 Barry Douglas was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to music and community relations in the 2021 New Year Honours List. He previously received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2002 New Year’s Honours List for services to music.
RECENT PRAISE
THE ARTS DESK
DAVID NICE
What a luxury to feel safe, from the very first stepwise magic, in the hands of an artist who knows exactly how to pace this tricky giant, never lapsing into excess sentimentality and preserving maximum clarity through all the labyrinthine inner lines.
THE HERALD
KEITH BRUCE
The soloist for this concert was Irish pianist Barry Douglas, whose relaxed approach to Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No.2 made light of its fiendish rhythmic demands. Its central slow movement is some of the saddest music the composer wrote, but the opening is playful and jazzy, and that bluesy feel returns in the dialogue the piano has with the cello section later. Douglas and Uryupin were both alive to the contrasts in the work in what was a vibrant partnership.
CAMBRIDGE INDEPENDENT
JUDE CLARK
Next up was pianist Barry Douglas, who movingly interpreted Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 1 in the concert’s centrepiece performance. Written when the composer was, astonishingly, just 17 and 18 (although substantially revised in his 40s), Douglas deftly captured the quick switches in tone, from a moving delicacy through the gamut of emotions to furious, tumbling cascades of notes.
THE SCOTSMAN
In between came a very grown-up Shostakovich Second Piano Concerto from Irish pianist Barry Douglas. It might have been written for his pianist son’s graduation concert, but for Douglas and Uryupin, the Concerto’s youthful playfulness hid something far darker. From the snappy, spiky, heavily accented opening, there was a wonderfully menacing, manic edge to their account – put aside somewhat in their caressing slow movement, but returning in the biting, chilly clarity of the finale. …. it was a brilliant, perceptive reading.
THEATER JONES
Douglas played purely Rachmaninoff ….The audience went crazy when it was over.
BELFAST TELEGRAPH
An enthralling mix of chiselled brilliance and melting lyricism.
CONTACT
ALISON HEATHER
GENERAL MANAGER
+44 (0) 207 957 5812
+44 (0) 775 452 3450
EMAIL
MOLLY MCFADDEN
SENIOR ASSISTANT ARTIST MANAGER
+44 (0)7442 627 611
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ROMANA JAROFF
NORTH AMERICAN RECITALS BOOKING
O: +1 212 994 3518
C: +1 646 228 7690
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