Marwood Anthony

British violinist Anthony Marwood is known worldwide as an artist of exceptional expressive force, with an effortless technique and beautiful tone. His energetic and collaborative nature places him in great demand as soloist/director with chamber orchestras worldwide, while his eminence as a soloist has brought him to work with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Sir Andrew Davis, Thomas Søndergård, David Robertson, Gerard Korsten, Andrew Manze, Ilan Volkov, Jaime Martin and Douglas Boyd. In recent years, engagements have included the Boston Symphony, Iceland Symphony and Vienna Radio Symphony orchestras, as well as the New Zealand, Sydney, Tasmanian and Adelaide Symphony orchestras.

Anthony has also recently toured with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra. He maintains a fruitful relationship with the Australian National Academy of Music, regularly directing performances from the violin. In September 2015 Anthony took up the post of Principal Artistic Partner with the celebrated Canadian chamber orchestra, Les Violons du Roy, appearing with them this season in Beethoven’s violin concerto with Bernard Labadie at the Lanaudière Festival in Québec.

Highlights of the current season include soloist/director engagements with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta and St Louis Symphony as well as debuts with the New World Symphony in Miami in March and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra early next year. Anthony makes several festival appearances including Austria’s Lockenhaus Festival, Trondheim Chamber Music Festival and Bridgehampton Festival in New York. His recital partners include pianist Aleksandar Madžar, appearing together at Wigmore Hall in the current season, and accordionist James Crabb, with whom he toured last season.

Anthony is a renowned champion of contemporary music, regularly premiering and recording new works for violin. Among those composed for Anthony are Thomas Adès’ “Concentric Paths”, Sally Beamish’s 1995 violin concerto and Steven Mackey’s “Four Iconoclastic Episodes”, premiered in 2009 with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, of which Anthony was Artistic Director. The Adès concerto was first performed by him in Berlin and at the BBC Proms, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by the composer, followed by many national premieres around the globe, and released on EMI to widespread praise in 2010. The most recent work written for Anthony was Samuel Adams’ Violin Concerto, premiered by the Berkeley Symphony, California, in 2014 to critical acclaim.

Anthony Marwood’s most recent CD features Schumann’s violin sonatas, recorded with Aleksandar Madžar and released on the award-winning Wigmore Live label. The disc, which was described by International Record Review as “exemplary in every way”, followed on from the duo’s acclaimed recording of the Brahms violin sonatas on the same label.

Recent releases for Hyperion Records include Schumann’s late works for violin and orchestra, and of the Britten Violin and Double Concertos, both with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Anthony has recorded more than 30 discs for Hyperion, spanning from the core trio repertoire with the Florestan Trio to Stravinsky’s complete music for violin and piano with Thomas Adès and the violin concertos by Kurt Weill and Peteris Vasks. Another facet of Marwood’s career is genre-bending presentations, such as the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ fully-staged production of Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale”, in which Marwood acted the role of the Soldier and played the violin part. He also enjoyed a successful collaboration with award-winning Indian classical dancer Mayuri Boonham.

Born in London, Anthony Marwood studied with Emanuel Hurwitz at the Royal Academy of Music, David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music, and took lessons from Sándor Végh and Daniel Phillips at IMS Prussia Cove. He was named Instrumentalist of the Year by the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2006 and was the violinist of the Florestan Trio for sixteen years. He is co-Artistic Director of the Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival in East Sussex and teaches annually at the Yellow Barn Festival in Vermont. Anthony was appointed a Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music in 2013. He plays a 1736 Carlo Bergonzi violin, kindly bought by a syndicate of purchasers.