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Melvyn Tan
Piano & Fortepiano |
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2007/8 saw Melvyn Tan performing a repertoire ranging from Mozart to Messiaen across Europe, South America and Australasia. His 50th birthday was marked by concerto appearances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a recital at Wigmore Hall and collaborations with cellist Steven Isserlis, violist Tabea Zimmerman and pianist Ronald Brautigam. Major international recital series included Beethoven in Vienna’s International Beethoven Series, Messiaen and Chopin at the Rudolfinum in Prague and at the Megaron Hall in Athens and the complete Mozart Sonatas in Oxford.
In early 2008 Melvyn toured Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and appeared at the Wellington Festival in New Zealand. The Sydney Herald described his ‘refined musicality; shaping phrases with immaculate smoothness’. At this Summer’s Edinburgh Festival The Scotsman spoke of his ‘pristine pianism’ in a Liszt / Bethoven recital with tenor Keith Lewis. His performance of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards at the Spitalfields Festival was described by The Guardian as ‘staggering’. At the Birmingham Triennial Festival The Independent considered that Melvyn Tan’s ‘singing dexterity produced a performance of Mendelssohn's Second Piano Concerto as memorable as the composer's must have been’.
Autumn 2008 sees a Liszt recital at the Liszt Festival at Raiding, the composer’s birthplace, concerto appearances in Utrecht with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Franz Brüggen, concertos with the London Chamber orchestra in Italy and recitals in Milan. In Spring 2009 he will appear at Vienna’s Musikverein with the Wienerakademie and in Madrid with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra.
He recently made his directorial début in Italy touring Mozart concerti with the Orchestra Filharmonica Marchigiana and began a collaboration with the London Chamber Orchestra, directing Beethoven and Mozart. This collaboration continues through 2009/10 with performances of Chopin, Hummel and Beethoven in Italy, India and in London. In the same season he returns to the Royal Festival Hall to perform Poulenc with the LPO. He will also mark Chopin’s 200th birthday with a series of performances on both modern piano and fortepiano.
Born in Singapore and living in London since 1978, Melvyn Tan began his studies at the Yehudi Menuhin School, where his teachers included Vlado Perlemuter, Nadia Boulanger and Marcel Ciampi. At the Royal College of Music he studied both piano and harpsichord. Intrigued by the sound of early keyboards he soon focused his attention on the fortepiano, rapidly building a formidable international reputation for his groundbreaking performances. His exclusive contract with EMI Classics produced an internationally acclaimed series of recordings including the complete Beethoven Sonatas and Concertos and Schubert impromptus.
He has given complete cycles of the Beethoven Sonatas, Debussy Preludes and Chopin Preludes, in New York, Tokyo and London, and has performed at many other leading concert halls around the world, including: the Barbican, the Wigmore Hall, and the Festival Hall, London; New York’s Lincoln Centre and Frick Collection; Théâtre du Châtelet and Cité de la Musique in Paris; Vienna’s Musikverein and Konzerthaus; Salzburg’s Mozarteum; Rudolfinum in Prague; the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; Die Glocke in Bremen; and the Philharmonie in Cologne. Festival appearances include: Salzburg (Summer Festival and Mozartwoche), Edinburgh, Mondsee, Cheltenham, Bad Kissingen, La Roque d’Anthéron, City of London, Spitalfields, Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, Melbourne, Monterey and Beijing.
His concerto partners include conductors Sir Roger Norrington, Bruno Weil, Leonard Slatkin, Frans Brüggen, Nicholas McGegan, Herbert Soudant, Libor Pešek, Marin Alsop, Emmanuel Krivine, Richard Hicocks, Roy Goodman and Jaap van Zweden.Chamber music and Lieder recitals hold an important place in Melvyn’s concert activities and his regular partners in repertoire ranging from Bach to Lutoslawski include cellist Steven Isserlis, violinist Christian Altenberger, the Škampa Quartet, and fellow pianists, Ronald Brautigam and Andreas Staier. His Lieder recital partners include Anne-Sofie von Otter, Angelika Kirchschlager, Wolfgang Holzmaier, Keith Lewis and Olaf Bär.
Orchestras with which he has worked include the BBC Symphony, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Age of Enlightenment, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Stuttgart Radio, Netherlands Symphony, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, Budapest Concert Orchestra, Salzburg’s Camerata and Mozarteum Orchestras, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Symphony, New World Symphony, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Melbourne Symphony and Australian Chamber Orchestra. He recently toured France with Emmanuel Krivine and the Chambre Philharmonique de Paris.
His EMI Classics discography includes the complete Beethoven Concertos and Sonatas and Schubert Impromptus in addition to discs of Mozart concertos and Weber’s Konzertstück. Further recordings of Mozart concertos are on Harmonia Mundi (Philharmonia Baroque and Nicholas McGegan) and Virgin Classics, this time with Tan’s own group, the New Mozart Ensemble.
For RCA Victor, he has recorded the complete Mendelssohn cello works with Steven Isserlis, and for Deutsche Gramophon, a Haydn/Mozart album and a disc of French and German Lieder with Anne-Sofie von Otter. His radio recordings for the BBC are numerous and the corporation released a BBC Music Magazine cover disc recording of Nocturnes by Chopin, Debussy and Field and a live Wigmore Hall recording of the Dvorák Piano Quintet with the Škampa Quartet. Melvyn’s most recent recording – a complete CD set of Debussy’s Préludes – received critical acclaim.
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