Raphael Wallfisch, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra & Kenneth Woods
Biographie Raphael Wallfisch, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra & Kenneth Woods
Raphael Wallfisch
is one of the world’s most celebrated cellists performing on the international stage, renowned for his curiosity and commitment to exploring and broadening the full range of repertoire for the instrument, and drawing on a rich musical heritage.
He was born in London into a family of distinguished musicians, his mother the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and his father the pianist Peter Wallfisch, and was inspired at an early age by hearing Zara Nelsova play, going on to study in California with Gregor Piatigorsky, who chose him to perform with Jascha Heifetz in the informal recitals at his home. His career was launched at the age of twenty-four when he won the Gaspar Cassadó International Competition in Florence.
Since then he has enjoyed a global career, much loved in his home country where he has forged close relationships with orchestras including the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, Hallé, BBC NOW, Royal Scottish National, BBC Scottish and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; and respected around the world, working throughout Europe with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, WDR Symphony, RAI Torino, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Gulbenkian, Bergen Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, Lahti Symphony and Budapest Festival orchestras, and further afield with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, New Zealand Symphony, Singapore Symphony and many others, working recently with such leading conductors as Łukasz Borowicz, Martyn Brabbins, Nicholas Collon, Andrew Davis, Neeme Järvi, Kirill Karabits, Andrew Litton, Ed Spanjaard, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Bramwell Tovey.
The depth of Wallfisch’s interest in the repertoire is borne out in his extraordinary discography – including a long relationship with Chandos, a complete Vivaldi series on Naxos with Nicholas Kraemer, and with EMI, Decca, Black Box, ASV, CPO and Nimbus – which explores both the mainstream and countless lesser-known works by Barber, Dohnanyi, Hindemith and Respighi, to name a few, and what is considered the benchmark recording of Martinů concertos with the Czech Philharmonic and Jiří Bělohlávek. Wallfisch is a particular champion of British repertoire, recording concertos by Bax, Bliss, Britten, Delius, Finzi, Moeran and Walton, written for Piatigorsky, which he was privileged to record for the Chandos Walton Edition. He enjoyed strong early collaborations and musical friendships with such legendary British conductors as Vernon Handley, Richard Hickox and Charles Mackerras, and he is now President of the British Music Society.
He is dedicated to expanding the cello repertoire, working closely with many of Britain’s leading composers, many of whom have written works especially for him, including Peter Maxwell Davies, Kenneth Leighton, Giles Swayne, John Tavener and James MacMillan, which he recorded with the BBC Scottish Symphony with Osmo Vänskä. He plays regularly at the Jewish Museum in Berlin and is currently focused on a series of recordings of Jewish refugee composers for CPO ‘Voices in the Wilderness’, including Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans and joined by the recording of a new work ‘In Exile’ by Jonathan Dove for cello, baritone and orchestra with Simon Keenlyside, the City of Birmingham Symphony and Gergely Madaras released in 2023 (Lyrita). Other recent highlights include a collaboration with the Royal Ballet and Carlos Acosta at Covent Garden which they then took to the Barbican in multiple performances.
As a soloist and consummate chamber musician, he has toured worldwide, performing at many of the world’s prestigious halls and festivals including the Concertgebouw, Wiener Konzerthaus and Berliner Philharmonie, alongside regular festival appearances including Spoleto, Schleswig Holstein, Enescu and Pablo Casals, Adelaide and Perth festivals as well as the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh International. His long-standing and distinguished partnership with pianist John York over four decades spanned international tours and numerous recordings of core and undiscovered repertoire including a recent album of cello transcriptions of Rebecca Clarke. More recently he has founded a quartet Amici della Musica and his Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch with Hagai Shaham (violin) and Arnon Erez (piano) has received critical acclaim, invited for the Beethoven 2020 anniversary to perform the complete Beethoven trios at Wigmore Hall, where Wallfisch enjoys a long and fruitful relationship.
The strong influence of Wallfisch’s early teachers including Amaryllis Fleming, Amadeo Baldovino and Derek Simpson has led to his passion in working with new generations of cellists and he is in demand as a teacher, currently as Professor at the Royal College of Music and was recently appointed International Chair of Violoncello and Chamber Music at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, as well as being invited frequently to the juries of international competitions such as the Rostropovich in Paris, Schoenfeld in Harbin and Enescu in Bucharest. He plays the 1733 Montagnana “Ex-Romberg” and an exquisite modern cello built for him by Patrick Robin.
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Kenneth Woods
Hailed by Gramophone as a “symphonic conductor of stature,” conductor Kenneth Woods has worked with the National Symphony Orchestra (USA), Royal Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia and English Chamber Orchestra. He has also appeared on the stages of some of the world’s leading music festivals, such as Aspen, Scotia and Lucerne. In 2013, he took up a new position as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Vernon Handley. In 2015 he was made the second Artistic Director of the Colorado MahlerFest, the only American organization other than the New York Philharmonic to receive the Gold Medal of the International Gustav Mahler Society.
Under Woods’ leadership since 2013 the English Symphony Orchestra has gained widespread recognition as one of the most innovative and influential orchestras in the UK. During this period the ESO received Classical Music Magazine’s “Premiere of the Year” plaudit for both Donald Fraser’s orchestration of the Elgar Piano Quintet in 2015 and John Joubert’s opera Jane Eyre in 2016. Jane Eyre also marked the ESO’s first foray in to opera, and the premiere and subsequent Somm Recordings albums were both received with international critical acclaim including a string of five-star reviews, Disc of the Month nods and Joubert’s opera was also named the Birmingham Post classical music highlight of 2016. Woods has also helped make the ESO a major force in the recording industry after a ten-year hiatus between ESO discs. His first disc with the ESO was volume one in the Complete Piano Concertos of Ernst Krenek, selected by The Times of London as one of their “Best Recordings of 2016.” The ESO’s recording of Fraser’s acclaimed Elgar orchestrations on Avie was a Classic FM Disc of the Month, and more recently, Nimbus have released “An Eventful Morning in East London” with Harriet Mackenzie, a collection of 21st Century Violin Concertos welcomed with a five-star review in The Times of London. In 2016, Woods and the ESO launched their 21st Century Symphony Project, an ambitious multi-year effort to commission, premiere and record nine new symphonies by leading composers, with the triumphant premiere of Philip Sawyers’ Third Symphony.
Kenneth Woods’ transformational work as an orchestra builder first came to international attention during his tenure as Principal Guest Conductor of the Stratford-upon-Avon based Orchestra of the Swan from 2010-4. His leadership there lifted the orchestra to a new level of world-wide critical acclaim and audience popularity and produced a significant string of recordings. He and Swan recorded the first complete cycle of the symphonies of Austrian composer Hans Gál, paired with those of Robert Schumann for Avie Records. This series was among the most successful classical recording projects in recent years, highlighted in National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Performance Today, BBC Radio 3, the Sunday New York Times, the Sunday Telegraph and Washington Post. It also won the Diapason d’or in France and was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Among his other OOTS recordings are Schoenberg’s chamber ensemble versions of Das Lied von der Erde and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (for Somm) by Gustav Mahler, which won the coveted IRR Outstanding rosette from International Record Review, and “Spring Sounds, Spring Sea” (for MSR), a MusicWeb ‘Record of the Year’. Other highlights include orchestral music of Philip Sawyers (another MusicWeb ‘Record of the Year’) for Nimbus, music of Brahms and Schoenberg for Somm, and a disc of contemporary trumpet concerti by John McCabe, Robert Saxton and Deborah Pritchard with trumpeter Simon Desbruslais for Signum.
A widely read writer and frequent broadcaster, Woods’ blog, A View from the Podium, is one of the 25 most popular classical blogs in the world. He has spoken on Mahler on NPR’s All Things Considered and is a regular speaker on BBC radio programmes. Since 2014, he has been Honorary Patron of the Hans Gál Society.
