Ian Bostridge - NOSPR

Ian Bostridge CBE’s extraordinary international career has taken him to the foremost concert halls, orchestras and opera houses in the world. Synonymous with the works of Schubert and Britten, his recital career has taken him to the Salzburg, Edinburgh, Munich, Vienna, Aldeburgh and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade Festivals and to the main stages of Carnegie Hall, the Bayerische Staatsoper, La Monnaie and Teatro alla Scala. In opera, Ian has received particular praise for his interpretation of Aschenbach Death in Venice at the Deutsche Oper & Peter Quint The Turn of the Screw for Teatro alla Scala. His recordings have won all the major international record prizes and been nominated for 15 Grammys.

Ian has held artistic residencies at the Vienna Konzerthaus and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade, the Barbican, the Luxembourg Philharmonie, the Wigmore Hall and Hamburg Laeiszhalle. Ian has also participated in a Carte-Blanche series with Thomas Quasthoff at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and a Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall, as well as the inaugural Artistic Residency with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Ian has worked with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Chicago, Boston, London and BBC Symphony orchestras, the London, New York, Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras, the Rotterdam Philharmonisch Orkest, Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Andrew Davis, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Antonio Pappano, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding and Donald Runnicles. 

Highlights of the 24/25 season include a return to the Concertgebouw, a tour across mainland China alongside conductor Daniel Harding, recitals with Piotr Anderszewski in Paris and Krakow, and a US tour with Julius Drake taking in the 92nd Street Y, Montreal’s Bourgie Hall and Baltimore’s Shriver Hall. The season will also see Ian continue his artistic collaboration with director Deborah Warner in staged performances of Winterreise at the Ustinov Studio at Theatre Royal Bath. Ian will revisit beloved concert repertoire including Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Britten’s War Requiem on multiple stages across Europe and the US.

Other recent highlights have included Zender’s Winterreise at La Monnaie cond. Sir Antonio Pappano, War Requiem with the London Philharmonic Orchestra cond. Vladimir Jurowski, the Boston Symphony Orchestra cond. Sir Antonio Pappano, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich cond. Kent Nagano and San Francisco Symphony cond. Philippe Jordan, a tour of St Matthew Passion with Les Talens Lyriques cond. Christophe Rousset, staged performances of Das Paradies und das Peri with Capella Cracoviensis, Les Illuminations with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra cond. Andris Nelsons, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra della Toscana and the MITO Festival, Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été with the Seattle Symphony cond. Ludovic Morlot and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra cond. Zehetmair, Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris cond. Lars Vogt, Barcelona Symphony cond. Marta Gardolińska and Sinfonica di Milano cond. Mariotti, and recordings of the major Schubert song cycles live at the Wigmore Hall with pianists Lars Vogt and Thomas Adès. Other recent appearances include Winterreise with Sir Antonio Pappano at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Elbphilhmarmonie and Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, and with Thomas Adès for Auditori de Barcelona, The Folly of Desire with Brad Mehldau at the Wiener Konzerthaus and the MITO, Verbier and Bozar Festivals, a Korean recital tour of Winterreise with Julius Drake, and a European concert tour with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. 

His operatic appearances have included Aschenbach Death in Venice  for the Deutsche Oper, Peter Quint The Turn of the Screw for the Teatro alla Scala, Handel’s Jeptha for Opéra National de Paris, Renaud Armide for Opéra Comique, Nerone L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Tom Rakewell The Rake’s Progress and Male Chorus The Rape of Lucretia for the Bayerische Staatsoper, Don Ottavio Don Giovanni for the Wiener Staatsoper, Tamino Die Zauberflöte, Aschenbach Death in Venice and Jupiter Semele for the English National Opera, Peter Quint The Turn of the Screw, Don Ottavio Don Giovanni and Caliban The Tempest for the Royal Opera House, Lysander A Midsummer Night's Dream for Opera Australia and at the Edinburgh Festival, and Madwoman Curlew River in the Netia Jones’s staging for the London Barbican which was also seen in New York and on the west coast of America. 

A prolific recording artist, Ian’s recent Pentatone recording of Schubert’s Winterreise with Thomas Adès won the Vocal Recording of the Year 2020 in the International Classical Music Awards. Other recordings include Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin with Graham Johnson (Gramophone Award 1996), Tom Rakewell The Rake’s Progress with Sir John Eliot Gardiner (Grammy Award, 1999), and Belmonte Die Entführung aus dem Serail with William Christie. Under his exclusive contract with Warner Classics, recordings included Schubert and Schumann Lieder (Gramophone Award 1998), The English Songbook and Henze Lieder with Julius Drake, Britten’s Our Hunting Fathers with Daniel Harding, Mozart’s Idomeneo with Sir Charles Mackerras, Janáček’s The Diary of One who Disappeared with Thomas Adès, Schubert with Leif Ove Andsnes, Mitsuko Uchida and Sir Antonio Pappano, Noel Coward with Jeffrey Tate, Britten Orchestral cycles with the Berliner Philharmoniker  and Sir Simon Rattle, Wolf with Pappano, Bach cantatas with Fabio Biondi, Handel arias with Harry Bicket, Britten Canticles and both Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (Gramophone Award, 2003) and Billy Budd (Grammy Award, 2010), Adès’s The Tempest (Gramophone Award 2010) and Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Recent recordings include Respighi Songs and Die schöne Mullerin with Saskia Giorgini for Pentatone, Tormento d’Amore, Shakespeare songs (Grammy Award, 2017) and Requiem: The Pity of War with Pappano for Warner Classics, as well as Berlioz’s Les Nuits d'Eté, Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Debussy’s Le Livre de Baudelaire arr. John Adams with Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The 22/23 season saw the release of Ian’s latest two albums through Pentatone: The Folly of Desire with Brad Mehldau and Schwanengesang with Lars Vogt. 

His book Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, 2016) was published by Faber and Faber in the UK and Knopf in the USA in 2014. In the 20/21 season Ian gave a lecture series for the University of Chicago and took up the position of Visiting Professor at the Munich Hochschule für Musik und Theater. Ian’s most recent book, Song and Self, was published by Faber and Faber in 2023. 

Ian was a fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1992-5) and in 2001 was elected an honorary fellow of the college. In 2003 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Music by the University of St Andrews and in 2010 he was made an honorary fellow of St John's College Oxford. He was made a CBE in the 2004 New Year’s Honours. In 2014 he was Humanitas Professor of Classical Music at the University of Oxford.