Piers Lane
Piers Lane (born 8 January 1958) is an Australian classical pianist. His performance career has taken him to more than 40 countries. His concerto repertoire exceeds 75 works. Early life Lane's English father and Australian mother met while auditioning as piano students for the Royal College of Music. Lane was born in London and he grew up in Brisbane. He graduated with a Medal of Excellence from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where his teacher was Nancy Weir, winning the Margaret Nickson Prize in 1978 and the Ruby C Cooling prize in 1977 and 1978. He was later awarded an honorary doctorate by the conservatorium. He first came to prominence at the inaugural Sydney International Piano Competition in 1977, at which he was named Best Australian Pianist (he was a judge at the 2004 competition). He later studied overseas on a Churchill Fellowship. Career Highlights of Lane's career include concerto performances at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in New York with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein; Beethoven's Emperor Concerto with The Queensland Orchestra, which received a Limelight Award for Best Orchestral Concert of 2007; concerto appearances with the City of Birmingham Symphony, London Philharmonic, Hallé and Ulster Orchestras; a solo recital in Birmingham's Symphony Hall for the BBC; a three-recital series called Metamorphoses and an all-Chopin recital at the Wigmore Hall in London; and appearances in many major piano festivals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Scandinavia. He has also played with all ABC and BBC Orchestras, the Aarhus, City of Birmingham, Bournemouth, Gothenburg and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, the Hallé, Philharmonia, Kanazawa Ensemble and City of London Sinfonia, the London, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras and the Orchestre National de France among many others. He has been soloist five times at the BBC Proms in London's Royal Albert Hall. Engagements in Australia and New Zealand during 2008 include a second national tour with Cheryl Barker and her husband baritone Peter Coleman-Wright for Musica Viva Australia, concerto performances in Christchurch and Dunedin and solo recitals in Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Newcastle, Noosa and Perth. Recent collaborations as a chamber player have included a Musica Viva tour of Australia with violist/composer Brett Dean and performances with Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg in Malmö, Stockholm and the Bergen International Festival. He continues his long-standing partnership with British violinist Tasmin Little in UK recital tours. Piers Lane is Patron of the Accompanists Guild of Queensland Inc. Since 2007, Lane is the Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music held annually in Townsville. Lane has an extensive discography on the Hyperion label and has also recorded for EMI, Decca, BMG, Lyrita and Unicorn-Khanchana. Recent releases from Hyperion include concertos by Eyvind Alnæs and Christian Sinding, a Delius song disc with Yvonne Kenny and a recording of Ernest Bloch's Piano Quintets with the Goldner String Quartet, which was an Editor's Choice in the December 2007 Gramophone magazine and BBC Music Magazine's Record of