Barry Douglas (piano), Ireland

The concert programme features the works of the iconic western classical composers – Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven, a representative of the Viennese school, as well as Platonov’s contemporaries – an Austrian composer, a representative of musical expressionism and the Second Viennese school Alban Berg and a British composer Benjamin Britten.

Barry Douglas is a renowned Irish pianist, who attained international acclaim after winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. He is the artistic director of the Camerata Ireland orchestra and the Clandeboye Festival in Northern Ireland.

He has performed with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestre National de France (French National Orchestra),  the Israel Symphony Orchestra, the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Halle, Ulster Orchestra, the Brussels Philharmonic orchestra, London Symphony orchestra, the Russian National orchestra, the Singapore Symphony orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony, Seattle Symphony and Melbourne Symphony orchestras alongside the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestras, among others.

The pianist has collaborated with such prominent conductors as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Colin Davis, Marek Janowski, Lawrence Foster, Mariss Jansons, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, André Previn, Mstistlav Rostropovich, Kurt Sanderling, Leonard Slatkin, Yvegeny Svetlanov, Michael Tilson-Thomas and Yuri Temirkanov, as well as Neemi Jarvi, Krjstian Jarvi and Paavo Jarvi.

As an exclusive Chandos artist, he recorded a complete Brahms series in four volumes. September 2014 saw a release of Douglas’s album Celtic Reflections,   presenting the pianist’s own arrangements of Irish folk music.

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 Douglas was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2002 New Year’s Honours List for services to music. He also received a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music and an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Queens University Belfast; he is an honorary Doctor of Music at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth and a Visitng Professor at the Dublin Conservatory of Music. In May 2009 he received an honorary Doctorate of Music from the Uinversity of Wyoming (the USA).