Roderick Williams is one of the most sought-after baritones of his generation with a wide repertoire spanning baroque to contemporary. He enjoys relationships with all the major UK and European opera houses also performs regularly with leading conductors and orchestras throughout the UK, Europe, North America and Australia. Festival appearances include the BBC Proms, Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Aldeburgh and Melbourne. As a recitalist he is in demand around the world and appears regularly at venues including the Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw and Musikverein and at song festivals including Leeds Lieder, Oxford International Song and Ludlow English Song.

Roderick Williams was awarded an OBE in June 2017 and was Artist in Residence with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra from 2020–22, Artist in Residence at the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival and Singer in Residence at Music in the Round. He was also one of the featured soloists at the coronation of King Charles III in 2023.

As a composer he has had works premièred at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, the Purcell Room and on national radio. In 2016 he won Best Choral Composition at the British Composer Awards and from 2022/23 he holds the position of Composer in Association of the BBC Singers.

Iain Burnside enjoys a unique reputation as pianist and broadcaster, forged through his commitment to the song repertoire and his collaborations with leading international singers. In recent seasons such artists have included Ailish Tynan, Ailyn Perez, Susan Bickley and Ann Murray; John Mark Ainsley, Andrew Kennedy, Lawrence Brownlee, Roderick Williams, William Dazeley and Bryn Terfel.

His extensive recording portfolio reflects his passion for British music. The Naxos English Song series features Burnside in the complete songs of Gerald Finzi, together with discs of Britten, Butterworth, Gurney, Ireland, Vaughan Williams, Alwyn and Ian Venables. He has also recorded Britten, Tippett, Herbert Hughes, FG Scott and Judith Weir for Signum; Richard Rodney Bennett for NMC; Sir Hubert Parry and contemporary Scottish repertoire for Delphian. The NMC Songbook received a Gramophone award. For Albion Records he has recorded songs and chamber works of Vaughan Williams as well as a solo disc of Vaughan Williams and Gurney. Recent projects include the complete Rachmaninov songs for Delphian and a major series of vocal recitals for Opus Arte.

His broadcasting career covers both radio and television and has been honoured with a Sony Radio Award. His musical play A Soldier and a Maker, based on the life of Ivor Gurney, was presented to critical acclaim at the Barbican Centre and the Cheltenham Festival. A play, Journeying Boys, premièred at the Royal College of Music in February 2012, and was restaged in November at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where Burnside is research associate.

Formed in 2001 at the Royal College of Music, the Sacconi Quartet is rapidly gaining an enviable reputation as one of the outstanding quartets of their generation. The quartet has won second prize at the 2006 London International String Quartet Competition, along with the Esterhazy Prize & Sydney Griller Award, and first prize in the Trondheim International String Quartet Competition. They also won the Kurtag Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, first prize in the Royal Over-Seas League chamber music competition and were shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society award. In May 2006 the quartet was selected for representation by Young Concert Artists Trust (YCAT).

The quartet gave recitals at Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, the Aldeburgh and Lincoln International Chamber Music Festivals and appeared at numerous festivals and venues throughout the UK. They also made their début at the Holland Festival to great acclaim. They have collaborated with the Chilingirian Quartet, Wihan Quartet, David Campbell, Morgan Szymanski, Tim Boulton, Lawrence Power and Raphael Wallfisch in quintet, sextet and octet concerts.

Of Italian Jewish ancestry, Gerald Finzi was among the most English of composers, spending much of his life in the countryside of Hampshire and later near Newbury, where the string orchestra he founded became an important vehicle for the performance of his music. His interest in earlier English music and in English literature is largely reflected in his own works, which owe something to Parry, to his older contemporary Vaughan Williams, and to Elgar.

Orchestral Music

Finzi’s orchestral music includes a Clarinet Concerto and a Cello Concerto, with a Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra. His very English Severn Suite enjoys some popularity, while Introit survives from an abandoned violin concerto.

Vocal and Choral Music

Choral music by Finzi demonstrates his wide knowledge of English literature; it includes settings of poems by near contemporaries such as Edmund Blunden and Robert Bridges, and by the 17th-century poets Crashaw, Traherne and Vaughan. His setting of Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality was performed at the West of England Three Choirs Festival in 1950, while his Dies natalis, for soprano or tenor and string orchestra, setting poems by Traherne, was originally intended for the same festival in 1939. The cycle Let us garlands bring, settings of Shakespearian verses for baritone and piano, was also arranged for baritone and string orchestra, and other groups of songs aptly set poems by Hardy.