Danny Driver

Piano

Danny Driver

Gramophone Award nominated pianist Danny Driver is recognised internationally as an artist of sophistication, insight and musical depth. His studies at Cambridge University and the Royal College of Music inspired his uniquely holistic approach to performance and programming. Driver’s 2021-2022 season will include a three-concert curated series at London’s Wigmore Hall focussed on solo and chamber works of György Ligeti (including the complete Études for Piano), and a co-curated series at Turner Sims Concert Hall with spotlight on J S Bach.  More imminently he juxtaposes Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata with works by Maurice Ravel, Deirdre McKay and Betsy Jolas over the 2019-2020 season.

Driver has performed with orchestras throughout the world, with recent highlights including BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, BBC NOW, Hallé, Minnesota Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Hong Kong Pro Arte, Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Uppsala Chamber Orchestra. His frequent performances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have been heard across the UK, at London’s Cadogan Hall and the BBC Proms (where he has performed twice as a soloist). He has collaborated with conductors Andrew Litton, Martyn Brabbins, Alexander Shelley, Mario Venzago. Marzena Diakun, Rebecca Miller, Rory Macdonald and Sir James Macmillan.

Recital invitations bring Driver to concert halls and music festivals across Europe, Asia and North America. Most recent highlights include several recitals at the Wigmore Hall, London Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series, Lichfield Festival (as their Artist-in-Residence 2018), Music Toronto, Salle Bourgie in Montreal, Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, and several performances of Ligeti’s Piano Études interlaced with Debussy’s complete Images across the United States and Japan.  In December 2019 Driver makes his first appearance at Perth Piano Sundays in Scotland with a complete performance of Ligeti’s Piano Études, shortly after recording them for Hyperion Records (London).

Driver’s passion for chamber music sees him regularly invited to such esteemed chamber music festivals as Oxford May Music, O/Modernt, Eilat, Bard Music Festival, Carducci Festival, and Australian Chamber Music Festival while he enjoys long-standing musical partnerships with violinist Chloë Hanslip, cellist Oliver Coates, and baritone Christian Immler. Recent projects with these artists have included the complete Beethoven Piano & Violin Sonatas at Turner Sims Concert Hall (recorded live for Rubicon Classics), a recording of Bernstein’s Arias & Barcarolles (to be released later in 2018), song recitals in Switzerland, France, Germany and Canada, and performances of Thomas Adès’ Lieux Retrouvés and Morton Feldman’s Patterns in a Chromatic Field (cello and piano) at the South Bank Centre and King’s Place respectively.

Driver’s decade-long relationship with the prestigious Hyperion Records label has spawned a varied and internationally acclaimed discography of works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Handel, York Bowen, Benjamin Dale, Mili Balakirev, Robert Schumann, and Erik Chisholm. Of his first volume of C P E Bach Sonatas, Bryce Morrison wrote in Gramophone: “It would be impossible to over-estimate Driver’s impeccable technique and musicianship.…this is one of the finest of all recent keyboard issues’. His most recent release, Volume 70 of Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series, featured piano concertos by Amy Beach, Dorothy Howell, and Cécile Chaminade. His recordings have won him numerous awards including Limelight Magazine’s Instrumental Recording of the Year 2014, and his recent inclusion in the New York Times’ list of 2017’s Best Classical Recordings (Beach, Howell and Chaminade Concertos with the BBCSSO).