Coral Lancaster pursues a varied career as a freelance chamber musician, orchestral musician and teacher. Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Coral studied with David Pereira (dedicatee of Inner World and Tailitnama Song), before moving to the UK in 1997. Based in Oxford, Coral performs with the Lyric Piano Trio and the Jubilee Ensemble. She is known for her sensitive performances and works regularly with orchestras such as the Philharmonia and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In 2015, Coral has performed with the Philharmonia in London, Madrid and Paris and will shortly be touring to Iceland with that orchestra.
… a stunning, beautifully rich, warm sound … she performed magnificently.’ (Newbury Weekly News)
In this concert Coral returns to her musical roots with two Australian pieces. Sculthorpe is well known to British audiences for his distinctive Australian music evocative of the harsh interior landscape. Tailitnama Song draws upon Aboriginal melodies and culture – a culture steeped in the concept of ‘Dreamtime’. Vine’s Inner World is scored for solo cello and sampled cello. Carl Vine writes: 'The cello is not only the physical instrument in the player's hands, but also an enveloping shroud of sound - a hall of mirrors in which artifice and reality collide ...' In tonight's concert Coral will be performing on the very same 18th-century instrument that was used to make the sampled cello recording.
The dreaming theme connects these Australian pieces to the other music: three of Fauré’s most beautiful short pieces for cello and piano and Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, a work which enjoys its centenary this year. Messiaen’s Louange à l’éternité de Jésus is the cello solo from Quartet for the End of Time, a work which is a mystical, almost transcendental, hymn to inner realities and timelessness.
Pianist Alan MacLean is a graduate of The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Alan studied with the Hungarian pianist Bela Simandi and received the award for the most outstanding student in his final year. Further study followed with internationally renowned pianists including Karl Ulrich Schnabel. Much in demand as a chamber musician, he has played with many of the country's leading instrumentalists and he premiered Malcolm Arnold's 'Trio Bourgeoises' and a recent arrangement of John Field's Rondo in A flat for Piano and Orchestra. His recording with the pianist Peter Lawson, 'English Piano Music for Piano Duet', was nominated for a Disc of the Year Award in the USA. Alan's schedule for 2015 includes festival engagements and masterclasses throughout the Midlands, the South West, London, Birmingham and Edinburgh and Sri Lanka.