Rohan de Saram featuring William Hancox, Jonathan Truscott, Craig Stratton, Elisa Bergersen and Rachel Firmager
Biography Rohan de Saram featuring William Hancox, Jonathan Truscott, Craig Stratton, Elisa Bergersen and Rachel Firmager
Rohan de Saram
made his name as a classical artist until his thirties, but has since become renowned for his involvement in and advocacy of contemporary music.
Rohan de Saram was born to Ceylonese parents in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. At age 11 he studied with Gaspar Cassadó in Siena and Florence. At 17 he won the Guihermina Suggia Award to study in the UK with Sir John Barbirolli and in Puerto Rico with Pablo Casals. Casals said of him “There are few of his generation that have such gifts”.
Rohan was invited to give his Carnegie Hall debut in 1960 with the New York Philharmonic, playing Khachaturian’s Cello Concerto under the baton of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. From 1979 to 2005 de Saram was a member of the Arditti Quartet but now works with other artists to pursue his own artistic vision. He has also toured and recorded with Markus Stockhausen’s “Possible Worlds” group. He worked personally with Zoltán Kodály, Francis Poulenc, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir William Walton and Dmitri Shostakovich. He has performed with the major orchestras of Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and the former Soviet Union with conductors such as Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa and William Steinberg.
In ensemble or as a soloist, he has premiered works by Luciano Berio (Il Ritorno degli Snovidenia; Berio was so impressed that he wrote Sequenza XIV (2002) for de Saram, who gave the first performance and then made the premiere recording), Bose, Benjamin Britten, Sylvano Bussotti, John Cage, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Philip Glass, Sofia Gubaidulina, Paul Hindemith, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti (Racine 19), Wolfgang Rihm, Alfred Schnittke and Iannis Xenakis (Kottos).
Rohan de Saram and Brinch were introduced to one another by pianist Sylvia Clayton. As Rohan de Saram’s studied Brinch’s Suite for Solo Cello and the Sonata No. 1 the project to record the works together with pianist William Hancox was born. Subsequently the 2nd Sonata was especially composed for de Saram and Hancox followed by a Sonata Brevis dedicated to de Saram.
William Hancox
A student of the late Joseph Weingarten, pianist William Hancox is in demand both in the United Kingdom and abroad. He has performed concertos, chamber music and solo recitals throughout the country, notably at the Wigmore Hall and Windsor Castle. He has played in all London’s major concert halls, and broadcast for Classic FM and the BBC. A commitment to contemporary music has led to involvement in many first performances, and he also has a reputation as an exciting lecture recitalist.
His teaching and accompanying activities have involved positions at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Trinity College of Music, the Britten-Pears School at Aldeburgh, Dartington International Summer School and visits to Iceland where he has taught, recorded and performed, as well as conducting regular master classes for accompanists.
Recent concert activities include duo recitals in China and at the Cheltenham International Festival of Music where they gave world premieres of song cycles by Roxanna Panufnik and Richard Blackford.
Hancox and Brinch have a rich and varied musical partnership in which Brinch also performs as a Baritone. In addition to premiering Brinch’s songs and chamber-works they have recorded a double CD of songs and piano-works by the late German composer Dorothee Fischer.
The Bergersen Quartet
was founded in 2007 intent on performing and recording works by living composers. The Quartet now has an impressive repertoire of modern works, many of which have been specifically written for or dedicated to them. One of the world’s only string ensembles trained in the extraordinary techniques of spectral music, their other ventures encompass minimalist, contemporary, film, library, pop and world scores.
