Artists

2022 Festival Artists

Piers Lane

Daniel de Borah

Viney Grinberg Duo

Daniel Herscovitch

Benjamin Kopp

Bernard Lanskey

Stephen Emmerson

Brachi Tilles

Jenni Flemming

Piers Lane (Photographer Keith Saunders)"No praise could be high enough for Piers Lane whose playing throughout is of a superb musical intelligence, sensitivity, and scintillating brilliance." Bryce Morrison, Gramophone

London-based Australian pianist Piers Lane has a worldwide reputation as an engaging, searching and highly versatile performer, at home equally in solo, chamber and concerto repertoire. Five times soloist at the BBC Proms, Piers Lane’s wide-ranging concerto repertoire exceeds one hundred works and has led to engagements with many of the world’s great orchestras, working recently with conductors like Sir Andrew Davis, Andrew Litton, Vassily Sinaisky, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Brett Dean. Festival appearances have included Aldeburgh, Seattle, Bard, Bath Mostly Mozart, Bergen, Cheltenham, Como Autumn Music, La Roque d’Anthéron, Rockport, Prague Spring, Ruhr Klavierfestival, Schloss vor Husum and the Chopin festivals in Warsaw, Duszniki-Zdrój, Mallorca and Paris.

Highlights of the 2020/21 season include engagements with the Melbourne and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, a Musica Viva national tour of Australia with the Goldner String Quartet, an Australian tour with the Maltese tenor Josef Calleja, appearances at several US festivals, including Bard Music, a January 2nd recital at Wigmore Hall, duo performances with violinist Tasmin Little and further performances with actress Dame Patricia Routledge.

In recent seasons Piers Lane performed three concerti at Carnegie Hall, and world premieres of Carl Vine’s second Piano Concerto and Double Piano Concerto Implacable Gifts, both written for him.

His extensive discography for Hyperion includes much admired recordings of rare romantic piano concertos, including his 2020 release of Bliss, Rubbra and Bax concertos with The Orchestra Now, the complete Malcolm Williamson piano concertos, the complete Preludes and Etudes by Scriabin, transcriptions of Bach and Strauss, along with complete collections of Concert Etudes by Saint-Saëns, Moscheles and Henselt, and transcriptions by Grainger.
He has also recorded eleven volumes of piano quintets with the Goldner String Quartet for Hyperion, many cds with Tasmin Little and Michael Collins for Chandos and further solo and chamber cds for EMI, Phillips, Dutton, Unicorn Kanchana and ABC Classics.

Piers Lane is Artistic Director of the Sydney International Piano Competition. He was Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music from 2006 to 2017, and from 2006 to 2013 he also directed the annual Myra Hess Day at the National Gallery in London. He has written and presented over 100 programmes for BBC Radio 3, including the popular 54-part series The Piano.

In the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Birthday Honours he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished services to the arts. In 1994 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was a professor from 1989 to 2007. Piers holds Honorary Doctorates from two Australian Universities: Griffith and James Cook.


 

Daniel de Borah (Photographer Morgan Roberts)Daniel de Borah is recognised as one of Australia’s foremost musicians, consistently praised for the grace, finesse and imaginative intelligence of his performances. His wide-ranging performance schedule finds him equally at home as concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.

Since his prize-winning appearances at the 2004 Sydney International Piano Competition, Daniel has given recitals on four continents and toured extensively throughout the United Kingdom and Australia. As a concerto soloist he has appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, Adelaide and Auckland Symphony Orchestras.

Daniel studied at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and the Royal Academy of Music, London. He now lives in Brisbane where he serves as Head of Chamber Music at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University.


 

Viney Grinberg DuoLiam Viney and Anna Grinberg enjoy an international performance profile as a piano duo, involving festivals, major series, live radio broadcasts, orchestras, and CD releases on Naxos, ABC Classics and Tall Poppies. Described as “barnstorming” (The Australian) and “unforgettable - sure to be Best of the Year – the most compelling case for the beauty and variety of two piano repertory this reviewer has ever heard” (Rick Schultz, Los Angeles Times), the duo is committed to exploring classics of the two-piano and four hand repertoire, but also contributes to the ongoing expansion of that literature through commissioning composers.

Viney and Grinberg's innovative and creative approach has resulted in collaborations with composers, artists, dancers, choreographers and other established performing ensembles - as well as book chapters, articles and scholarly seminars and presentations. The Duo spent a decade in the United States, including five years at California Institute of the Arts, before taking up their current positions as Ensemble-in-Residence at The University of Queensland, Australia. Professor Viney is Head of the School of Music at UQ, and Dr Anna Grinberg is Head of Piano.


 

Daniel Herscovitch

Daniel Herscovitch studied with Alexander Sverjensky at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Rosl Schmid in Munich. While based in Germany he performed extensively on the continent and in England and toured Australia three times. He also appeared at several international festivals including the Berlin Festival, the Zagreb Biennale and the Saarbrücken Tage der Neuen Musik.

Since returning to Australia he has been active in solo and chamber music, and has appeared at the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the New Directions Festival and the Festivals of Melbourne and Sydney. He was a regular guest artist at Roger Woodward’s Sydney Spring Festival and toured for Musica Viva and in New Zealand. He has appeared with Synergy, Flederman, the Song Company and the Australia Ensemble and has toured with The Seymour Group. He was a soloist in the first Australian performance of the Bartók Concerto for Two Pianos. He has appeared in concert with Jane Manning, Wanda Wilkomirska, Clemens Leske, Geoffrey Gartner, Vivian Choi, Carl Vine and Ole Böhn.

He has toured the USA four times, most recently performing Bach’s Art of Fugue. He visits Indonesia annually and his fifth European tour in 2019 took him to Singapore, the UK, Norway and Germany where he performed Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis and included a residency at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. As well as performing overseas he is regularly asked to give lectures and masterclasses.

His solo repertoire ranges from Purcell to Carter and beyond, and includes contemporary Australian, Asian, European and American works, several of which he commissioned and premiered, including works by Peter Dart and Brad Gill.

His recordings of repertoire from the 17th to the 21st centuries have been released on Tall Poppies, Toccata Classics, CSM, Continuum, Biodiversity, Move and ABC Classics labels. His recent CD on the Toccata Classics label of music by Roger Smalley was Editor’s Choice in the 2019 Awards issue of Gramophone. A further CD of music by Don Banks has just been released in London. He is currently Associate Professor of Piano at The University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music.


 

Benjamin KoppPianist Benjamin Kopp has performed as soloist with many major Australian orchestras, including The Metropolitan Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria and WASO. In 2007 he was the winner of the keyboard section of the Symphony Australia Young Performer’s Awards.

In 2009, Benjamin co-founded the Streeton Trio, an all-Australian piano trio. As part of this trio, he has released four CDs (Mendelssohn Complete Piano Trios, Brahms/Ravel, Haydn/ Beethoven/Smalley, Kats-Chernin) which received favourable reviews in Limelight Magazine. The trio also received positive reviews in The Strad magazine. In 2014 the trio performed in Wigmore Hall in London.

The trio completed a national tour for Musica Viva in 2021 with Diana Doherty, and has toured extensively throughout Europe, China, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Scandinavia and New Zealand.

In Europe, Benjamin played concerts with Ensemble Namascae, Ensemble Contrechamps, Tomoko Akasaka, Danjulo Ishizaka and as part of the European Chamber Music Academy.

Recently, Benjamin has become a member of Ensemble Offspring, and has performed with Umberto Clerici, Jason Noble and the Sydney Chamber Opera. Benjamin has studied with Daniel Herscovitch, Pascal Devoyon, Avedis Kouyoumdjian, Rita Reichman and Jennifer Hammond.


 

Bernard LanskeyActive internationally for over 25 years as an administrator, collaborative pianist, scholar, recording producer and festival director, I have just begun my new role as Director and Professor at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University.  Born in Cairns, most of my adult life has been spent in the United Kingdom and Singapore, most recently as Dean of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore. As a pianist, I have performed across the world principally with string players and singers in chamber music, mixed recital and lecture-recital combinations I perform regularly with violinists Aki Saulière and Qian Zhou, German soprano Felicitas Fuchs and cellist Qin Li-Wei as well as Stephen Emmerson, with whom I also engage in artistic research experiments. This performance marks my first performance back in my alma mater since 1985 – looking forward to being back in a space of many fond memories."


 

Stephen EmmersonBefore his recent retirement, Stephen Emmerson was on the full-time staff at the Queensland Conservatorium for several decades, and he currently continues there as an adjunct professor. He studied piano at the University of Queensland with Pamela Page and later with Peter Wallfisch in London. He has maintained a busy career as pianist and chamber musician for many years, having performed widely in concerts and festivals around Australia and beyond.  He has performed duo recitals with many pianists including Roy Howat, Stewart Kelly, Bernard Lanskey, Sonya Lifschitz, Peter Roennfeldt and Angela Turner and has performed in each of the Australian Piano Duo Festivals.


 

Brachi TillesBrachi was born in Tel-Aviv where she carried out her main studies. She graduated from the Rubin Academy of music and the University of Tel-Aviv with a double major in music and French literature.

Having decided to specialize in chamber music, she continued her studies in Sienna, Italy and Vienna, Austria. It was in the Austrian capital that she began her association with the international chamber music group ENSEMBLE I, and toured with them extensively through Europe, Asia and the USA.

In 1976 the group moved to Melbourne where she lectured piano and chamber music at the Victorian College of the Arts. From 1978 to 1985 she held the piano lecturer position at the University of Southern Queensland. From 1985-96 she lived in Melbourne where along with solo and chamber music activities she was also the general manager of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. Since 1996, Brachi lives in Brisbane.

She has appeared as soloist with the Melbourne, Queensland, Tasmanian Symphony orchestras as well as with numerous community, youth and chamber orchestras. She has made recordings for many national radio and television stations in Europe and Asia and is featured regularly in live broadcasts for the ABC and 4MBS.


 

Jenni FlemmingPerformer, teacher, adjudicator and Federal AMEB Examiner, Jenni Flemming has taught piano and pedagogy at the Queensland Conservatorium for over 20 years, performing regularly in the Keyboard concert series. As Artist in Residence at the University of Queensland, Jenni was pianist with Perihelion, playing and broadcasting a subscription series and recording several CD’s of contemporary music. Her teachers include well-known Australian pedagogues Max Olding and Pamela Page, and Hungarian-born Bela Siki.

Jenni has performed as soloist with symphony orchestras and community ensembles in most Australian States, and has given concerts in Scandinavia, South East Asia, USA and the United Kingdom. Her passion for collaborative music-making has been a major focus of her career, performing with husband-cellist, Gwyn Roberts, piano duo partner Brachi Tilles, the Queensland Piano Trio, The Mayne Piano Quartet, and Ensemble I. She has recently been appointed Senior Co-ordinator of the Young Conservatorium Piano Department.

Founding Artistic Director of the Australian Piano Duo Festival, Jenni’s passion is to promote the cross-generational and collaborative performance experience of the piano Duo and Duet genre. Other passions include Improvisation and Art, recently publishing her child-hood compositions along with accompanying paintings.