Llŷr Williams

Welsh pianist Llŷr Williams is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence and the expressive and communicative nature of his interpretations. He has worked with orchestras including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Hallé Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru, I Pomeriggi Musicali, Meininger Hofkapelle, Berner Kammerorchester, and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg. A regular performer in the Wigmore Hall’s main piano series, Williams has also appeared at the BBC Proms in London, Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in the USA, Piano aux Jacobins in Toulouse and the Edinburgh International Festival. He is a regular performer at the East Neuk Festival in Scotland and is currently Artist-in-Association at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Artist-in-Residence at the Cowbridge Festival in Wales.

Williams is an acclaimed performer of Beethoven with several complete piano sonata cycles under his belt. Following a successful first cycle in Perth, Williams subsequently performed a complete cycle during an epic two-week marathon in Edinburgh that won him the prestigious South Bank Show Award. He later completed two cycles as a nine-recital project at the Wigmore Hall and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff between 2014 and 2017. In January 2017 he completed a successful collaboration with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in performances of all five Beethoven piano concerti.

The 2018-19 season included his debut with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and returns to the Royal Philharmonic and BBC National Orchestra of Wales as well as a highly successful Canadian recital debut at Salle Bourgie in Montreal, with the critic of Le Devoir describing Williams as ‘un secret trop bien gardé’. The 2019-20 season sees Llŷr Williams continuing his collaboration with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, as well as his debut with the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne. Williams also returns to the Edinburgh Festival in August 2019, while for the Beethoven anniversary season he will offer a complete sonata cycle at the Festival Cultural de Mayo in Guadalajara, Mexico and partial cycles in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

Llŷr Williams’ eclectic taste is reflected in his discography. April 2018 saw the release of ‘Beethoven Unbound’, a 12-CD Box set of the Wigmore Hall Beethoven cycle, on Signum Records, which was BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Recording of the Month’ in August 2018. His previous critically acclaimed CD, Wagner Without Words (Signum, August 2014) reflects Williams’ intimate relationship with operatic music. Other recordings by Williams include two solo albums for Signum, as well as William Mathias’ second Piano Concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on Welsh label Tŷ Cerdd.

Born in Pentrebychan, North Wales, Llŷr Williams read music at The Queen’s College, Oxford and went on to take up a postgraduate scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music where he won every available prize and award. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and in 2017 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wales. He was an active member of the Live Music Now! scheme for several years, was selected for the Young Concert Artists Trust in 2002. From 2003-2005 he was a BBC New Generation Artist and in 2004 received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust award.

June 2019

• Bartok
  Piano Concerto No3
Beethoven
Concertos 1-5
Choral Fantasy
Berg
Chamber Concerto Op 8
Brahms
Piano Concerto No2 in B flat major Op83
Britten
Piano Concerto in D Major, Op 13
Carter
Dialogues for Piano and Orchestra
Chopin
Piano Concerto No1 in E minor, Op 11
Piano Concerto No2 in F minor, Op21
Grieg
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op16
Liszt
Piano Concerto No1 in E flat major
Mathias
Piano Concerto no 2, op 13
Piano Concerto no 3, op 40
Mendelssohn
Piano Concerto No1 in G minor
Piano Concerto No2 in D minor
Concerto for Violin, Piano & Orchestra
Mozart
Piano Concerto No12 in A major, K414
Piano Concerto No14 in E flat major, K449
Piano Concerto No 17 in G major, K453
Piano Concerto No 18 in B flat major, K456
Piano Concerto No 19 in F major, K459
Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor, K466
Piano Concerto No 21 in C Major K467
Piano Concerto No 22 in E-flat Major K482
Piano Concerto No 23 in A major, K488
Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor, K491
Piano Concerto No 25 in C major, K503
Piano Concerto No 26 in D major, K537
Piano Concerto No 27 in B flat major, K595
Rachmaninov
Piano Concerto No2 in C minor, Op18
Piano Concerto No3 in D minor, Op30
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, Op43
Schoenberg
Piano Concerto
Schubert/Liszt
Wanderer Fantasy
Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op54
Shostakovich
Piano Concerto for No1 in C minor, Op35
Piano Concerto No2 in F major, Op102
Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No1 in B-flat minor, Op23