CLARA MOURIZ (MEZZO-SOPRANO) & JULIUS DRAKE (PIANO)
Songs by Bizet, Berlioz, Wolf, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Schubert, Guastavino and Montsalvatge.
Spanish born, Clara Mouriz is rapidly establishing herself as one of the most exciting mezzo-sopranos of her generation. She has recently been distinguished with an Independent Opera / Wigmore Hall Voice Fellowship for a promising career committed to both opera and song.
Clara was awarded the End of Studies Extraordinary Prize from the Escuela Superior de Canto in Madrid then settled in London, graduating from the Royal Academy of Music Opera Course with an Outstanding Diploma. During her studentship she received the Vice-Principal’s Award, the prestigious Richard Lewis Award, the Friends of the RAM Wigmore Award and the Audience Prize in the Handel Competition.
Clara’s latest projects include a critically acclaimed debut as Rossini’s Cenerentola at Malmö Opera; Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Opera St. Moritz; Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été at Padova’s Auditorium Pollini under Alexander Shelley; and Mozart’s Requiem at the Tokyo Opera-city under Daniel Harding. Her performance of Ravel’s Sheherazade was broadcast for BBC Radio 3 and her first solo recital disc of Spanish songs has been released on the award-winning new record label Sonimage.
A committed recital singer, Clara is a Kirckman Concert Society Artist and made her debut in Wigmore Hall in 2007, returning in 2009 and 2010. Clara appears regularly in Europe and in the UK at events including Oxford Chamber Music Festival, Leeds Lieder+, the recital series of the Westminster School and Oxford Lieder Festival. Next season, her recital engagements include Leeds Lieder+ alongside Malcolm Martineau, and Musée D’Orsay in Paris with Dame Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson.
JULIUS DRAKE
The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and specialises in the field of chamber music, working with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc.
He appears at all the major music centres: this season concerts take him to the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Schubertiade, and Salzburg Music Festivals; to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, New York; Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Philarmonie, Cologne; Châtelet and Musée de Louvre, Paris; La Scala, Milan and Liceu, Barcelona; Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; and Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms, London.
Julius Drake’s many recordings include live recitals for the ‘Wigmore Live’ label, with among other artists Lorraine Hunt Liebersen, Joyce Didonato and Christopher Maltman, an award winning recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI and his recent widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion, for which Barber Songs and then Schuman Heine Lieder have won both the 2008 and 2009 Gramophone Awards. Julius Drake now embarks on a major project for Hyperion to record the complete songs of Franz Liszt.
Highlights in the coming season include a tour of Europe with Wolf’s Spanisches Liederbuch with Ian Bostridge and Angelika Kirchschlager; concerts in the Edinburgh and Schubertiade Festival with Gerald Finley; a recording of English songs for Harmonia Mundi with Bejun Mehta; a Beethoven/Schubert project in Aldeburgh, Lisbon and Luxembourg with among others the Belcea Quartet and Imogen Cooper; a recital in Istanbul with Joyce Didonato and tours in the USA with both Matthew Polenzani and Dorotea Röschmann.