London-based Australian pianist Piers Lane has a flourishing international career which has taken him to more than forty countries. In the past few years, his engagements have included concerto performances at New York's Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center; a three-recital series called Metamorphoses at London's Wigmore Hall; the Opening recital of the Sydney International Piano Competition; festival appearances at Bard and Newport in the USA, Bergen, Elverum and Trondheim in Norway, Como Autumn Music in Italy, Prague Spring, The Ruhr and Schoss vor Husum in Germany, La Roque d"Antheron and Paris Chopin in France and Valdemossa Chopin in Majorca. Highlights of the 08-09 season include debuts with the Warsaw Philharmonic and the National Radio Symphony of Poland, a Royal Festival Hall performance with the London Philharmonic, a recital for Wigmore Hall's London Pianoforte Series and a Fleck Fellowship at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
In 2007, Piers Lane added a new dimension with his appointment as Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. He tours annually in Australia and New Zealand. In 2007, his performance of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto with The Queensland Orchestra received the Limelight magazine Award for Best Orchestral Performance. His 2009 schedule includes concerto performances with the Adelaide, Queensland and West Australian Symphony Orchestras; five concerts in the new Recital Hall in Melbourne, including the Opening Night, a solo recital and collaborations with the Goldner String Quartet, clarinettist Michael Collins and tenor Markus Schafer; a return to the Adam Festival in New Zealand; and two recordings for the ABC Classics label.
Five times soloist at the BBC Proms in London's Royal Albert Hall, Piers Lane's concerto repertoire exceeds 80 works. He has played with all the ABC and BBC orchestras, the Aarhus, American, City of Birmingham, Bournemouth, Gothenburg and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras; Halle; Kanazawa Ensemble; Orchestre National de France; Philharmonia; City of London Sinfonia and the London, Royal Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras among others. Leading conductors with whom he has worked in recent years include Andrey Boreyko, Sir Andrew Davis, Richard Hickox, Andrew Litton, Sir Charles Mackerras (for whose 70th Birthday Gala he played Mozart/Hummel K491 at the Barbican Centre) Jerzy Maksymiuk, Maxim Shostakovich, Vassily Sinaisky, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Antoni Wit.
Piers Lane is also in great demand as a chamber music player. He continues his long-standing partnership with British violinist Tasmin Little. Other recent collaborations have included Musica Viva tours with soprano Cheryl Barker, baritone Peter Coleman-Wright and violist/composer Brett Dean and performances with Ann Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg in Malmo, Stockholm and the Bergen Festival.
Piers Lane's extensive discography includes, on the Hyperion label, much admired recordings of rare Romantic Concertos, the complete Preludes and Etudes by Scriabin and transcriptions of Bach and Strauss, along with complete collections of Concert Etudes by Saint-Saens, Moscheles and Henselt and transcriptions by Grainger. Recent releases include the Piano Concerto by William Busch on the Lyrita label and, from Hyperion, Piano Quintets by Bloch with Australia's Goldner String Quartet, an Editor's Choice in the Gramophone magazine and Record of the Month in the BBC Music Magazine. He has also recorded for the BMG, Classics for Pleasure, Decca, EMI Eminence, Lyrita and Unicorn-Khanchana labels.
Piers Lane has written and presented over 100 programmes for BBC Radio 3, including the popular 54-part series The Piano.
In 1994, he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, where he has been a Professor since 1989. In 2007, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Griffith University in Australia. He is Patron of the European Piano Teachers' Association UK, the Old Granary Studio in Norfolk, the Youth Music Foundation of Australia and the Music Teachers' Association and the Accompanists' Guild in Queensland. He is a Trustee of the Hattori Foundation in London; Vice-President of Putney Music Club; Artistic Director of the Myra Hess Day held annually at the National Gallery in London and of the Bloch Festival to be held at the Wigmore Hall in 2009.
