Ronan Magill

Last updated

Ronan Magill (born 1954, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England) is a British concert pianist [1] and composer. [2]

Contents

Born to Irish parents in Sheffield, Ronan Magill was a pupil at Ampleforth College, the prominent Catholic boarding school in North Yorkshire. Having begun to study with Fanny Waterman, he met Benjamin Britten, who, impressed by his abilities, became the young Magill's mentor ("I was amazed at his general musicality and intelligence and his is a remarkable gift"). [3] This relationship lasted until Britten's death in 1976.

Magill was among the first intake of students at the Yehudi Menuhin School, where he was taught by Marcel Gazelle.

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Magill studied with David Parkhouse and John Barstow (piano) and Philip Cannon (composition). While at the College, he was awarded all the major prizes for both disciplines, finally graduating with the Hopkinson Gold Medal for piano and the Cobbett prize for composition.

After his Wigmore Hall and South Bank debuts in 1974, Magill moved to Paris to study with Yvonne Lefebure at the Conservatoire; while there, he won the Premier Prix for piano, and in the years that followed made a number of appearances on French radio and television. His later teachers include Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Pierre Sancan and Nikita Magaloff.

In 1985 Magill was the winner of the First Milosz Magin International Piano Competition for Polish Music (this led to a well-received tour of Poland); in 1990 he was chosen to assist Mstislav Rostropovich in the preparations for his Jubilee concert.

Magill's second international competition victory was in 1994, when he won the Third British Contemporary Piano Competition. This led to appearances throughout the UK, including one at the 1995 Huddersfield International Contemporary Music Festival, where he performed with the English Northern Philharmonia conducted by Paul Daniel.

Since then he has given recitals at the South Bank, and concerto performances with the Royal Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras, recitals at the South Bank, concertos with the Royal Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras, and recitals at the Lichfield and Abbotsbury Festivals and the AL Bustan Festival in Beirut. In 1999 Magill performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto K595 with the Belmont Ensemble at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

In recent years, Ronan Magill has visited the Canterbury and Deal Festivals (2004), and made his first appearance in Japan (2005). He returned to Japan in 2006 and 2007, and was due to play there again in May 2009.

Compositions

Magill remains active as composer, and has performed many of his own compositions at prominent venues, including the Wigmore Hall and the South Bank. In 1988 he performed the premiere of his work "Titanic 10th-15th April 1912" at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. This work (described as 'An atmospheric Poem in Five Pictures for Solo Piano'), has been recorded and is available on CD.

Having performed 'Titanic' at the Abbotsbury Music Festival, Magill was commissioned by the Festival to write a work for actors and singers and small orchestra to be called 'The Legend of St Catherine of Alexandria' (taken from the play 'Tyrannick Love' by John Dryden). This commission was supported by Millennium funding, the D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, and a grant from South West Arts. The piece was premiered in Abbotsbury in May 2000.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joanna MacGregor</span>

Joanna Clare MacGregor is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer, and festival curator. She is Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and a professor of the University of London. She is currently artistic director of the International Summer School & Festival at Dartington Hall.

Steven George McNeil Osborne is a Scottish pianist who has performed concertos and solo recitals worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pekka Kuusisto</span> Finnish musician

Pekka Kuusisto is a Finnish musician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mats Lidström</span>

Mats Lidström is a Swedish solo cellist, recording artist, chamber musician, composer, teacher and publisher.

Howard Gordon Shelley is a British pianist and conductor. He was educated at Highgate School and the Royal College of Music. He was married to fellow pianist Hilary Macnamara, with whom he has performed and recorded in a two-piano partnership, and they have two sons.

Mark Padmore is a British tenor appearing in concerts, recitals, and opera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piers Lane</span> Musical artist

Piers Lane is an Australian classical pianist. His performance career has taken him to more than 40 countries. His concerto repertoire exceeds 75 works.

Benjamin Grosvenor is a British classical pianist.

Andreas Haefliger is a German-born Swiss pianist.

Andrew von Oeyen is a concert pianist. He is a citizen of the United States and France.

Joo Yeon Sir, is a South Korean-born British violinist and composer.

Margaret Fingerhut is a British classical pianist. She is known for her innovative recital programmes and recordings in which she explores lesser known piano repertoire.

Andrew Shulman is an English virtuoso cellist, conductor and composer. He is currently the principal cellist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and maintains his cello studio at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunwook Kim</span> South Korean pianist living in London (born 1988)

Sunwook Kim is a South Korean pianist living in London. He came to international recognition when he won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dejan Lazić</span> Croatian pianist and composer

Dejan Lazić is a Croatian pianist and composer, and a naturalised Austrian citizen. He has appeared with such orchestras as the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony, Bamberger Symphoniker, Swedish Radio, Danish National, Helsinki Philharmonic, Australian Chamber Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra, working with such conductors as Iván Fischer, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Giovanni Antonini, Kirill Petrenko, Robert Spano and John Storgårds.

The Russian-born British/German cellist Leonid Gorokhov studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire with Anatoli Nikitin and took part in masterclasses with Daniil Shafran. Winner of Concertino Praga and Paris Chamber Music Competition, Leonid Gorokhov is the only Russian cellist to be awarded the Grand Prix and the First Prize of the Geneva Concours (1986). In 1995 the European Association for Encouragement of the Arts awarded the Cultural Achievement Prize to Leonid Gorokhov for exceptional talent and outstanding artistic accomplishment.

James Barralet is a British cellist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jayson Gillham</span> Australian pianist

Jayson Lloyd Gillham is a British-Australian classical pianist, based in London. In 2014, Gillham was the winner of the 2014 Montreal International Musical Competition, which brought him to international attention. His outstanding performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 was described in the Huffington Post as being played 'with such streamlined patrician elegance that he took home First Prize and a string of engagements...' The renowned British conductor Sir Mark Elder said Gillham 'plays Beethoven with a sort of ‘glow’'. In May 2015, Gillham signed a three-album deal with ABC Classics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François-Frédéric Guy</span> French classical pianist

François-Frédéric Guy is a French classical pianist.

Alexandra Ioana Dariescu is a Romanian British classical concert pianist, educator, mentor and producer. She is best known for her multimedia project The Nutcracker and I and her focus on promoting the works of female composers.

References

  1. ↑ "A CONSISTENTLY HIGH STANDARD". MV Daily. Retrieved 26 December 2010.
  2. ↑ "Ronan Magill". divine-art.com. Archived from the original on 13 February 2011. Retrieved 26 December 2010.
  3. ↑ Letters From a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, vol.6
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.