English Symphony Orchestra, BBC Women’s Chorus of Wales & Kenneth Woods
Biographie English Symphony Orchestra, BBC Women’s Chorus of Wales & Kenneth Woods
Anna Huntley
was a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music International Opera School. Awards during this time included the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Vocal Fellowship at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition, 3rd Prize at the Das Lied Competition in Berlin, the Michael Oliver Prize at the London Handel Singing Competition, MBF Education Awards and an Independent Opera Postgraduate Bursary.
An outstanding recitalist, Anna is a regular performer at the Wigmore Hall, London and across the rest of the UK and Europe, working with many of the world’s leading accompanists including Graham Johnson, Julius Drake, Iain Burnside, Simon Lepper and James Baillieu. Highlights include recitals at the Wiener Musikverein, Kammermusiksaal, Berliner Philharmonie (broadcast on German Radio), the Blüthner Zylkus at the Haus der Ingenieure, Vienna and also at Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Herten and Oxford Lieder, Brighton, Bath, St Magnus and Leeds Lieder Festivals. In 2015, she made her Wiener Konzerthaus debut with Georg Nigl and Luca Pianca in their Bach Cantata Series, before returning the following month to sing in Schumann’s Faust Szene with Daniel Harding and the Wiener Symphoniker. She recently returned once again to perform Walter Arlen’s The Song of Songs with the Wiener Symphoniker, recording it for Japanese TV station, NHK and Austria’s ORF. Other recent concert performances include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Alexander Vedernikov and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (broadcast on Radio 3), Haydn’s Harmoniemesse with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andras Schiff and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Michael Collins and the City of London Sinfonia, streamed live from London.
In 2016, Anna returned to English National Opera to perform the role of Daughter in their Olivier Award-Winning production of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten, having previously covered the roles of Dorabella/ Cosi fan tutte, Pauline/ Queen of Spades and the leading role in Joanna Lee’s The Way Back Home. Other highlights of recent opera seasons include cover Suzuki/ Madama Butterly (Welsh National Opera), Hermia/ A Midsummer Night’s Dream (English Touring Opera), Irene/ Atalanta (Cambridge Handel Opera Group) and Cherubino/ The Marriage of Figaro and Rosina/ The Barber of Seville in tours of the UK with Opera Brava. In 2018, she will make her debut at The Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv in the role of Hermia/ A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In February 2016, Anna was featured as a ‘Rising Star’ in BBC Music Magazine and in the same month, released her Debut CD of Schubert Songs for Voice & Guitar on the Quartz label in the same month. She was selected by Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2012 and has been mentored by Angelika Kirchschlager as part of the Royal Philharmonic Society/YCAT Philip Langridge Mentoring Scheme ever since. Lauded by The Guardian as a ‘fast-rising British talent’, future releases include recordings of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben and Ravel’s Chansons madécasses and Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.
She is very grateful for support from the Richard Carne Trust.
Gwilym Bowen
Recent highlights have included Bach in the San Francisco Bay Area with Philharmonia Baroque; a role debut as Flute A Midsummer Night's Dream for Opéra de Lille; returning to BBC National Orchestra of Wales as Evangelist for Bach's Matthäus-Passion; debuts with the Warsaw Philharmonic and Norske Blåseensemble; and returning to perform with Concerto Copenhagen and the Academy of Ancient Music.
With repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the contemporary, with a specialist interest in Bach, Monteverdi and Handel, his operatic highlights include his operatic highlights include Damon Acis and Galatea and multiple roles in both L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d’Ulisse with Academy of Ancient Music; Snout A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Giove / Eurimaco Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria for The Grange Festival; Father in Hasse’s Piramo e Tisbe with The Mozartists; Valletto L’incoronazione di Poppea for Angers-Nantes Opéra; Sylph Zaïs with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Concert engagements have included B Minor Mass with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Weihnachtsoratorium across Australia with Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Evangelist in the Johannes-Passion with John Butt and BBC National Orchestra of Wales; the Matthäus-Passion for Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and De Nederlandse Bachvereniging; Bach cantatas with Masaaki Suzuki at Lincoln Center; Messiah with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Hanover Band, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra and West Australian Symphony Orchestra; Monteverdi and Schütz with the Dunedin Consort; Das Lied von der Erde with the City of London Sinfonia, and Ernst Wilhelm Wolf's Passionsoratorium with Die Kölner Akademie.
His recordings include B Minor Mass with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Hyperion), Johannes-Passion with De Nederlandse Bachvereniging (All of Bach); Petrus Brockes Passion with Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) and Concerto Copengagen (cpo); and the world premiere recording of Dussek's Messe solemnelle (AAM).
Born in Hereford, Gwilym was a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with double-First class honours in Music, before studying at the Royal Academy of Music.
His current engagements include J. S. Bach Weihnachtsoratorium with OAE; Evangelist Johannes-Passion with Academy of Ancient Music and Britten Sinfonia; and Matthäus-Passion with Music of the Baroque, Chicago; Britten War Requiem with Croatian Radio Television Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano; Alexander’s Feast with La Scintilla; Jephtha with Heidelberg Bachchor; Messiah with Polyphony; La Resurrezzione with Concerto Copenhagen and Zelenka Te Deum with Les Ambassadeurs.
The English Symphony Orchestra
and the English String Orchestra are two related professional orchestral ensembles that are based in the city of Worcester in Worcestershire, in the English Midlands of the United Kingdom. They are collectively abbreviated as ESO.
The English String Orchestra was founded in 1987 by conductor William Boughton. It was first based in Malvern and quickly established a reputation for its recordings of music in the English Romantic and national styles prevalent in the early decades of the 20th century.
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.
