Following the success of the opening of last season, Inverness Chamber Music are bringing the finest Scots pianist of his generation to the Town House at 8.00pm on Wednesday 21st September to open the new season of nine evening concerts, ending next May.

Steven Osborne was born in Scotland in 1971 and studied at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.  He is  renowned for his idiomatic approach to a wide variety of repertoire from the mainstream classical works of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms to the more rarefied worlds of Messiaen, Tippett and Britten.

He has won numerous awards and prizes including the 2009 Gramophone Award for his recording of Britten’s works for piano and orchestra, as well as first prize at both the Naumburg International Competition in New York and the Clara Haskil Competition.

Steven Osborne performs regularly at all the major concert halls around the world, including an annual concert at London’s Wigmore Hall.  He has appeared in eight BBC Prom concerts, the most recent being last September when he played Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto.

His most recent performance in Inverness was in March 2010 when he appeared in the Town House with his wife, clarinettist Jean Johnson.

The programme for next Wednesday’s concert starts with Beethoven’s Sonata in C sharp minor “Moonlight”, then Ravel’s suite Gaspard de la nuit.  The second half will be the complete set of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives and the Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat major by Rachmaninov.

Tickets are available from Eden Court Box Office or at the door on the night from 7.30pm.

In the meantime, Inverness Chamber Music’s little sister, At One With Music, will be presenting a lunchtime concert on Friday 16th September, also in Inverness Town House featuring the popular Armenian pianist Artem Akopyan returning for his third visit to Inverness.

This time he is bringing his compatriot, soprano Anush Hovhannisyan, to present a selection of songs from their homeland as well as from the world of the musicals.  Tickets for this lunchtime concert will be available on the door from 12.30pm.  The concert starts at 1.00pm and will last for about fifty minutes.

Source: James Munro