Ensemble Piano

South Korean-born New Zealand pianist Somi Kim has established herself as one of today’s most highly regarded young pianists with a string of competition successes and extensive concert experience.

Kim is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. She graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Performance and Master of Arts with Distinction, receiving the HRH Princess Alice the Duchess of Gloucester’s Prize, a DipRAM and the Christian Carpenter prize. Kim is the 2017 winner of the Royal Over-Seas League Accompanist Prize, and has received the Gerald Moore Award, AESS Patricia Routledge National English Song Accompanist Prize, Mozart Singing Competition Accompanist Prize, Bromsgrove International Musicians Competition Accompanist Prize, Vivian Langrish Memorial Trust Prize, Thomas Art of Song Accompanist Prize, Major Van Someren-Godfrey Prize for Accompanists, the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ Concordia Serena Nevill and Barthel Prizes, and the 6th Pettman/Royal Over-Seas League Arts International Scholarship. Kim made her debut with Chamber Music New Zealand in 2015.

Sought after as a chamber musician, song accompanist and répétiteur, Kim is an artist for the Kirckman Concert Society, Park Lane Group Music Trust and Concordia Foundation, and a Yeoman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. She is a scholar on the Britten-Pears and Samling Artist Programmes, and Georg Solti Accademia, and is a staff pianist at The International Holland Music Sessions, International Vocal Competition ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Gisborne International Music Competition and New Zealand Opera School. Kim is the official pianist with the NZTrio, a piano trio recognised by the New Zealand Herald as ‘New Zealand’s most indispensable chamber ensemble’.

In recital, Kim’s recent and future appearances include at The Royal Concertgebouw, Slovak Philharmonic, Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, Cadogan Hall, The Bridgewater Hall and the Edinburgh Fringe, Ryedale, St Endellion and Oxford Lieder festivals.

Praised as ‘exceptional’ and his playing ‘deft and responsive’ (the Observer), Keval Shah has quickly established himself at the forefront of a new generation of song pianists, with appearances at concert halls and festivals across Europe, and a string of competition successes.

Recent highlights include concerts at the Buxton International Festival and Oxford Lieder Festival, as well as an Artist in Residence series at Burgh House, and recitals as part of an ongoing project to perform the complete songs of Hugo Wolf. In September 2019, Shah was the official accompanist for the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera International Song Competition. His performances have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Danish national radio (DR P2), and he has recorded for Decca Classics. His debut album, with bass-baritone Michael Mofidian, is due for release on the Linn Records label in 2021.

Away from the recital platform, Shah is carving an international career as a teacher. After a spell teaching at the Royal Academy of Music, in September 2020 he will take up the position of Lecturer of Lieder at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where he will be the youngest professor in the institution’s history.

Shah is also active as a broadcaster and writer. He is a regular contributor and presenter for BBC Radio 3 and holds an Edison Fellowship at the British Library, where he is researching changing trends in the recorded performances of the songs of Hugo Wolf.

A former Britten-Pears Young Artist and Oxford Lieder Young Artist, Shah studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, graduating from both institutions with distinction. His teachers have included Michael Dussek, Audrey Hyland and Malcolm Martineau, and he has also benefited from tuition with Roger Vignoles, Bengt Forsberg and Helmut Deutsch.

Shah writes of his time at the Academy:

'My time at the Academy was absolutely critical in helping me to discover and hone my artistic identity. After a brilliant, but mainly academic, undergraduate experience, my two years on the MA programme at the Academy gave me the space and time to focus on my playing, building and refining my technique at the same time as learning much of the core song repertoire. Being surrounded by fellow pianists and a cohort of talented singers, I found myself in the ideal environment to forge musical partnerships and friendships which I now carry with me through my career. The enormous amount of performance opportunities, both in the building and at external venues like Wigmore Hall, gave me the stage experience I desperately needed, and through that I learnt so much about what it means to perform, and what it takes to do it successfully.

I was able to make the most of all the opportunities and possibilities of Academy life because I had the constant support and supervision of my professors. Michael Dussek, Audrey Hyland and Malcolm Martineau helped me to establish the strongest possible technical and musical foundation, and then taught me how to move beyond that foundation, allowing me to discover a physical and expressive freedom which has continued to expand the possibilities of my playing.

The most special thing about the Academy for me has always been the atmosphere of creativity and love for this art form. Being exposed every day to such an energetic environment has constantly renewed my passion for and dedication to what I do – stepping through the doors of the Academy is the best possible way of reminding oneself of the great privilege and joy of making music, and I am forever grateful for everything the Academy has been for me.'

Sholto Kynoch is a sought-after pianist who specialises in song and chamber music. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Oxford Lieder Festival, which won a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2015, cited for its ‘breadth, depth and audacity’ of programming.

Recent recitals have taken him to Wigmore Hall, Heidelberger Frühling in Germany, the Zeist International Lied Festival in Holland, the LIFE Victoria festival and Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Opéra de Lille, Kings Place in London, Opernhaus Zürich, Maison Symphonique de Montréal, and many other leading venues and festivals nationally and internationally. He has performed with singers including Louise Alder, Benjamin Appl, Sophie Daneman, Tara Erraught, Robert Holl, James Gilchrist, Dietrich Henschel, Katarina Karnéus, Wolfgang Holzmair, Jonathan Lemalu, Stephan Loges, Daniel Norman, Christoph Prégardien, Joan Rodgers, Birgid Steinberger and Roderick Williams, amongst many others.

Together with violinist Jonathan Stone and cellist Christian Elliott, Kynoch is the pianist of the Phoenix Piano Trio. The Trio’s recent CD, The Leipzig Circle, was described as ‘splendidly vibrant’ (BBC Music Magazine) and having ‘unaffected freshness and charm’ (Gramophone). They have commissioned a number of new works, and recorded Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s The Forgiveness Machine for Champs Hill and Philip Venables’ Klaviertrio im Geiste for NMC.

In recent years, he has curated several series of recitals around exhibitions at the National Gallery, including their Monet and Architecture exhibition in 2018, and a series for the British Museum.

He recorded, live at the Oxford Lieder Festival, the first complete edition of the songs of Hugo Wolf. Other recent and forthcoming recordings include discs of Schubert and Schumann lieder, the complete songs of John Ireland and Havergal Brian with baritone Mark Stone, recital discs with Martin Hässler and Anna Stéphany, and several CDs with the Phoenix Piano Trio.

In July 2018, Kynoch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. He studied Music at Worcester College, University of Oxford, before attending the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His teachers included Michael Dussek, Graham Johnson, Vanessa Latarche, Malcolm Martineau and Ronan O’Hora.

Photo by Marshall Light Studio

Welsh pianist Llŷr Williams is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence, and for the expressive and communicative nature of his interpretations. An acclaimed performer of Beethoven, he has several complete sonata cycles under his belt, including at Wigmore Hall and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, while in May 2020 a planned full cycle at the Festival Cultural de Mayo in Guadalajara, Mexico was recorded as live by Signum Records from his home in Wrexham and broadcast by the Festival.

In 2019 Williams returned to the Edinburgh Festival, as well as the Cowbridge festival where he is Artist-in-Residence, and the Gower Festival where he is a Patron. In 2020, prior to lockdown, he returned to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for a recreation of Beethoven’s 1808 Vienna Concert, and gave all-Beethoven recitals in Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as for the Philadelphia Chamber Music society in the US. Following the completion of his Cardiff series Pictures in Music, in 2020/21 Williams will start of an all-Chopin series over two seasons and a five-recital Schubert cycle at Wigmore Hall.

Williams’s eclectic repertoire is reflected in his discography; his 12-CD Box set Beethoven Unbound, from the Wigmore Hall Beethoven cycle (Signum Records), was BBC Music Magazine’s Recording of the Month in August 2018. Other recordings by Williams include two solo albums for Signum, as well as William Mathias’s second Piano Concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on Welsh label Tŷ Cerdd.

Williams is a former BBC New Generation Artist and Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award recipient, and an Honorary Fellow and artist-in-association of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

Williams writes of his time at the Academy:

'When I arrived at the Academy I had a lot of musical knowledge and enthusiasm but not necessarily the means to put it across. It was during my time there that the foundations of my keyboard technique were developed, particularly working with Michael Dussek. There were many enriching opportunities to work with students from other departments, particularly the Vocal Faculty. I will always remember a concert I gave at the Duke's Hall of Wolf Lieder when I felt that my playing had really come together for the first time. It was events like this that gave me the confidence to start building up my career as a performer.'

Photo by Hannan Images