Sholto Kynoch
Biography
Sholto Kynoch is in demand as a chamber musician and song accompanist, regularly performing with many outstanding instrumentalists and singers.
Recent highlights have included recitals at Wigmore Hall (with violinist Kaoru Yamada), the Berliner Konzerthaus (with soprano Olja Dakic), the Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore (with violinist Tee Khoon Tang), the St Endellion Festival, the Chichester Festivities, Cambridge Summer Music, the Perth Festival, the Brasov International Chamber Music Festival in Romania, the Chelsea Schubert Festival (with the Doric String Quartet) and a series of recitals in Sweden (with violist Ylvali Zilliacus). In the BBC Proms he has performed two major chamber works by the composer Marc-André Dalbavie for a “Composer Portrait” Prom at the Royal Albert Hall.
2011 sees a performance of Mozart’s A major Concerto, K488, at St John’s Smith Square, a recital at the Opéra de Lille with mezzo-soprano Rowan Hellier, the release of the first three volumes in a complete recording of the songs of Hugo Wolf, and recitals in Sweden and America, amongst many other concerts around the UK.
In 2010 his debut CD was released on Stone Records, with violinist Kaoru Yamada, in a programme of fantasies by Messiaen, Schoenberg and Schubert (“stands out for high-quality playing” – The Observer). He is the pianist of the Phoenix Piano Trio, with violinist Jonathan Stone and cellist Marie Macleod. The trio will be performing the complete Beethoven trios in various venues in 2011, alongside five newly-commissioned works.
Sholto is the founder and director of the Oxford Lieder Festival, where he has accompanied more than sixty song recitals over the past nine years, working with singers including Kate Royal, Stephan Loges, James Gilchrist, Sophie Daneman, Anna Grevelius, Mark Stone and Jonathan Lemalu. In 2008, he was privileged to play for the “Farewell” recital of tenor Ian Partridge.
Following a Leverhulme-funded residency, he was appointed an Honorary Research Fellow of Bangor University in 2009. In 2010, Sholto was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Sholto read Music at Worcester College, Oxford, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He was awarded scholarships to all three institutions and upon graduation from the GSMD was appointed a Junior Fellow there. His teachers have included Michael Dussek, Graham Johnson, Vanessa Latarche, Malcolm Martineau and Ronan O'Hora.
Reviews:
“In the solo passages of the Allegro, Kynoch showed why he’s respected in this repertoire. This was idiomatic playing, vibrant and warm. Most impressive though, was the fluid interaction between the pair, reflecting the ebb and flow so central to the piece. This was “accompaniment” par excellence, where both partners enhanced each other, in mutual support.”
Seen and Heard / Wigmore Hall recital with Kaoru Yamada
“Kynoch instinctively makes the right sound for Brahms – warm velvet”
Classical Source / Wigmore Hall recital with Kaoru Yamada
“Ms Seara was accompanied by Sholto Kynoch, if 'accompanied' is the word: the piano parts were extraordinarily descriptive and atmospheric, and the two performers each moved back and forth between foreground and background.”
Daily Information / Oxford Lieder recital with soprano Joana Seara
“Kynoch's playing [in Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death] was gloriously manic, echoing the fractured unreality in the text... [He] showed what a good accompanist can achieve. In the Mussorgsky, his job was to match the singing. In Schumann's evocative preludes and postludes [Schumann, Liederkreis Op. 24], he provided the subtler commentary, gently pulling Stone back towards a more Lieder-like ethos. Singers and pianists are supposed to work together and support each other, and this was a very good example of their interaction. In the Duparc songs that followed, Kynoch's deft pedal deepened the colours to match Stone's dark timbre. It was a good example of pianist adapting to singer.”
Seen and Heard / Oxford Lieder Festival recital with baritone Mark Stone
“All played with conviction and consummate ease with their complicated textures… Sholto Kynoch's wonderful pianism added so much.”
Perth Courier / Perth Festival of the Arts recital with Rowan Hellier
“In Dalbavie's tribute to the artistry of Emanuel Ax, the piano's rhetoric – delivered with great authority by Sholto Kynoch – was drawn into a playful engagement with the wind instruments in a dialogue of textural exquisiteness reminiscent of Ravel's Introduction and Allegro.”
Classical Source / BBC Proms Composer Portrait concert at the Royal Albert Hall
“Giving their first recital in the Highlands, two superb musicians, Kaoru Yamada, violin, and Sholto Kynoch, piano, winners of the 2005 prestigious Tunnell Trust Award, began their programme with the Sonata in A major of Schubert. Here, both musicians immediately established a superb rapport and technical assurance in this most lyrical work. It was, however, in the famous Sonata in A major ("Kreutzer") of Beethoven that the true authority, panache and dazzling technical gifts of the duo were richly displayed. This was real virtuoso playing.”
Ross-shire Journal / Recital with violinist Kaoru Yamada in Invergordon