10.45am
David Owen Norris
Lecture Recital
Off with his head!

Promoted by The Elgar Society

College Hall
Buy tickets: £12

David Owen Norris's work is unusually varied. 2007 has seen performances of his oratorio Prayerbook, first performed in the English Music Festival in October 2006, and the first performance of his radio-opera Pugwash Walks the Plank. He has played concertos on fortepiano in Toronto and Yale and accompanied David Wilson-Johnson in première broadcasts of Stravinsky songs, and Sir John Tomlinson in Winterreise. His 2007 CD releases include Richard Arnell's Piano Concerto, Joseph Horowitz's Jazz Concerto, English viola music, Roger Quilter's piano music and Walter Scott songs. Other recordings mark Elgar's 150th Anniversary: a comprehensive selection of Elgar's songs at Elgar's piano, many recorded for the first time, and Karg-Elert's transcriptions of Elgar's orchestral music.

Norris's major article on Elgar's songs, The Seas of Separation, which identifies the colourful engraving that inspired Sea Pictures, appears in the Elgar Society Journal. His Radio 3 Building a Library on Elgar's First Symphony was broadcast in April. With Amanda Pitt and Mark Wilde he has performed Elgar songs and piano music throughout the year, from Dartington (where he gives the 10th Anniversary performance of the Piano Concerto) to the Three Choirs, from the Chelmsford Festival to the BBC in Manchester, and notably including a Birthday Bash at the Royal Academy of Music on June 2nd , which included the world premiere of Elgar's last song.

He has recorded Winterreise on fortepiano with Philip Langridge, whom he also accompanied in Britten song-cycles in Frankfurt. With Amanda Pitt he initiated a new strand of programming, Songs & Pictures, opening in Nottingham, moving on to the National Gallery in Washington DC and now extending to Newcastle-on-Tyne and Birmingham. He made two radio programmes on Faith and Art. His Discovering Music programmes on Radio 3 included Mendelssohn's D minor Piano Concerto.
www.davidowennorris.com