Australian tenor James Hancock joins internationally acclaimed Australian virtuoso pianist Leslie Howard for an intimate recital exploring love, longing and separation.
Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte and Schumann’s Dichterliebe frame a selection of songs by Roger Quilter, alongside Misty Jade’s Rêverie in Ab major, arranged for piano and voice.
Programme
Ludwig van Beethoven - An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98
Roger Quilter:
Go, Lovely Rose
Love’s Philosophy
Fair House of Joy
Misty Jade - Rêverie in Ab major
Robert Schumann - Dichterliebe, Op. 48
Evening Schedule
Doors: 18:30 - with a welcoming glass of wine to start the evening.
Music: 19:00
Reception: 20:15 - post-concert reception with a curated selection of wines and refreshments.
James Hancock was born in Melbourne. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts he was a Victoria State Opera Young Artist and was awarded the Opera Foundation Australia German Operatic Award (which gave him a contract at Oper Köln in the Opera Studio), Dame Joan Sutherland Scholarship, Tait Memorial Trust Scholarship, Australian Opera Auditions Committee Scholarship, Australian Musical Foundation London grant: American Institute of Musical Studies Scholarship and a Bayreuth Bursary.
Companies he has worked for include: Victoria State Opera; Melbourne Opera: Opera Australia; Siegmund (cover); Meistersingers Ltd; Pocket Opera Nürnberg (Der Ring in einem Abend arr. David Seaman) at the Covent Garden and Bath Festival; Cambridge University Opera Society (Bill, Maschinist Hopkins at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Brand; Der Mann Schwergewicht, Krenek; and The Mayor Der Held, Mosolov); UCL Opera (The King, The King and the Marshal, [Drot og Mask], Heise). Siegfried/ Siegmund (cover) Longborough Festival Opera; Siegfried & Götterdämmerung Edinburgh Players Opera Group (recorded) and Bacchus Ariadne auf Naxos with Abbey Opera at St Johns’ Smith Square.
James has an extensive concert and recital repertoire, including Verdi’s Requiem, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Bach’s Weinacht Oratorium; Song repertoire includes Winterreise, Die schöne Müllerin (Schubert) and Dichterliebe, Liederkreis (Schumann). Brahms Vier ernste Gesänge, Butterworth Shropshire Lad and Vaughan William’s Songs of Travel.
www.jameshancock.co.uk
Leslie Howard has balanced his prodigious recording career with an international concert itinerary which has seen him performing regularly throughout the world for more than half a century, always with a repertoire that seeks to extend the audience’s experience and to challenge accepted hierarchies of received wisdom. He has appeared regularly with the world’s finest orchestras, and has also pursued a distinguished career as a chamber musician, partnering many of the greatest solo musicians and ensembles of our time. Following a tour of Bangkok and Hong Kong in early 2020, the onset of Covid-19 had confined his work to online performances, recordings, lectures and masterclasses, but he resumed public performances at the end of July 2021 with yet another recital at his beloved Wigmore Hall: Schubert ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy and 5 major Liszt pieces, and his most recent performance there in 2024 presented Borodin’s Petite Suite, Glazunov’s Theme and Variations, and Rubinstein’s Fourth Sonata.
In addition to his solo Liszt recordings, Leslie Howard’s CD discography contains many other important world première recordings, including the four piano sonatas of Rubinstein, the three piano sonatas of Tchaikovsky and a disc of Scandinavian piano sonatas. All his early solo and duo recordings (with David Stanhope) of the music of Grainger have been reissued in a 5-CD set by Eloquence. There are also the Piano Quartets of Rubinstein – world première recordings for Hyperion, 25 Etudes in Black and White – his own compositions recorded for ArtCorp, and a disc pairing the two Rakhmaninov piano sonatas for Melba Recordings. Melba has also released two CDs with Mattia Ometto joining Howard in the complete music of Reynaldo Hahn for two pianos and piano duet. A project completed in 2025, Brilliant Classics are issuing three sets CDs of Liszt’s complete music for two pianos, again with Mattia Ometto – the first set contains all 12 of Liszt’s own two-piano versions of his symphonic poems; the second contains the Faust and Dante Symphonies and the magnificent transcription of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, while the third completes the cycle with all the remaining original two-piano works. Leslie Howard’s latest solo release is of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Variations and the complete ‘Creatures of Prometheus’ in Beethoven’s own solo piano version, for the Heritage label.
In his capacity as a renowned scholar working from primary sources, Professor Howard has produced 13 volumes of Liszt Society Publications for The Hardie Press, including the complete chamber music, 31 volumes of the annual Music Section of the Liszt Society Journal, and 9 volumes of the new Urtext Liszt scores for Edition Peters (with much-praised versions of the Sonata and the Années de pèlerinage). The distinguished Beethoven scholar Jonathan Del Mar has written that “Leslie is almost the only musician I know who manages to combine a flawless technique with the mind, the eye, the intellect and the scientific approach of the most rigorous scholar.” His other editorial work includes a new reconstruction and orchestration of Paganini’s fifth violin concerto for the collected Paganini Edition in Italy, the full score of Bellini’s ‘Adelson e Salvini’, and the now-standard two-piano score of Rakhmaninov’s 4th Concerto for Boosey & Hawkes. He is presently producing editing the new scores and making new pianoforte reductions of Bellini’s ‘Norma’ and ‘Zaire’ for the Edizione Nazionale in Italy. Leslie Howard is an adjunct professor in the Arts faculty at Monash University, his old Alma Mater. He also holds a Doctorate honoris causa from Melbourne University, and is the recipient of many international awards and honours.