Mozart’s greatest hits, played by the orchestra who really knows him
Martin James Bartlett
piano
Martin James Bartlett possesses a fearless technique and plays with maturity and elegance far beyond his years. The British pianist is the recipient of the inaugural Prix Serdang in 2022, a prize awarded to him by Rudolf Buchbinder and Thomas Pfiffner in recognition of his achievements while forging an international solo career.
Bartlett’s early public success was as the winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2014. This led to engagements with the orchestras such as the BBC Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestras and, in 2015, Bartlett made his BBC Proms debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2020 to 2022, Bartlett was the RCM Benjamin Britten Piano Fellow, and made his play-direct and conducting debut with the London Mozart Players at various UK festivals leading music by Pärt, Mozart and Britten.
Highlights of this season include debuts at major festivals such as Grafenegg (EUYO under Honeck) and the Merano Festival (Royal Stockholm Philharmonic under Saraste) as well as appearances with the NDR Elbphilharmonieorchester, the BBC Scottish Symphony, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras.
Recent seasons have seen Bartlett appear in recital at the Wigmore Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Salle Cortot Paris, Wiener Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw, Stadtcasino Basel and the Dresden Music, Rheingau Musik and Turku Music Festivals. In February 2022, Bartlett embarked upon his debut US tour in the Young Concert Artists Series, which included debut performances in New York and The Kennedy Centre, Washington DC.
An exclusive recording artist with Warner Classics, Bartlett recently released his third album La Danse (2024), which follows two widely acclaimed albums: Love and Death (2019) and Rhapsody (2022).
Imogen Cooper
piano
Regarded as one of the finest interpreters of Classical and Romantic repertoire, Imogen Coopers’s recent and future concerto performances include the London Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle, the Hallé Orchestra with Mark Elder and the Cleveland and Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestras with Jane Glover. Her solo recitals this season include performances in London, New York and Washington DC.
As a committed chamber musician Imogen performs regularly with Henning Kraggerud and Adrian Brendel. Following a long collaboration with Wolfgang Holzmair in both the concert hall and recording studio, her Lieder partners now include Ian Bostridge, Sarah Connolly and Mark Padmore. Imogen’s most recent solo recordings have been for Chandos Records.
Imogen received a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2021. The Imogen Cooper Music Trust was founded in 2015, to support young pianists at the cusp of their careers and give them time in an environment of peace and beauty.
Anna Prohaska
soprano
Austrian-English soprano Anna Prohaska made her debut aged 18 at Berlin’s Komische Oper as Flora in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and soon after with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, entering the ensemble at age 23. She has since gone on to have an extraordinary international career with some of the world’s greatest opera houses and orchestras, though the Staatsoper remains her artistic home.
Noted for her diverse repertoire with the Deutsche Staatsoper, her roles include Anne Trulove, Susanna, Sophie, Pamina, Ilia, Oscar, Blonde, Poppea, Euridice, Aricie, Ännchen, Anna Reich as well as world premieres by Beat Furrer and Peter Ruzicka. Conductors she has worked with include Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Philippe Jordan, Gustavo Dudamel and René Jacobs.
In huge demand on the concert platform, Anna has performed regularly with the Berliner Philharmoniker since her debut with them aged 24, performing under Rattle, Harding and Abbado. Other orchestras include the Vienna Philharmonic under Boulez, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jansons, Harding, Blomstedt and Nézet-Séguin, the LSO under Rattle, Los Angeles Philharmonic under Dudamel, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra under John Eliot Gardiner, the Cleveland Orchestra under Welser-Möst and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under von Dohnányi. Recent seasons have included artistic residencies at the Konzerthaus Berlin, Konzertahus Dortmund, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Kammerakademie Potsdam and the Philharmonie Luxembourg.
Jonathan Bloxham
conductor
Jonathan Bloxham begins his tenure as Music Director of the Luzerner Theater this season conducting Boheme, Dido and Aeneas, and I Montecchi e I Capuleti, having debuted in 2022 with Bluebeard’s Castle. He made his Glyndebourne Festival debut in 2021 with Luisa Miller, also conducting Don Pasquale for Glyndebourne Touring Opera. This is his second season as Resident Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the London Mozart Players.
Guest highlights of the 2023/24 season include NDR Elbphilharmonie, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and a return tour with musicians from the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras culminating in a televised concert from the Salzburg Grosses Festspielhaus.
After taking up conducting in his mid-twenties, Bloxham became Assistant at the CBSO from 2016-18 under Mirga Grazynte-Tyla, assisted Paavo Järvi, who then invited him to conduct the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie on several occasions.
Bloxham has recorded CDs with the London Symphony Orchestra (2022) and Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie (2021: “irresistible”, Musicweb International). As Artistic Director of the Northern Chords Festival, he has commissioned young composers such as Vlad Maistorovici, Jack Sheen and Freya Waley Cohen.
Bloxham studied conducting with Sian Edwards, Michael Seal, Nicolas Pasquet and Paavo Järvi. A former cellist, he learned at the Menuhin School and Guildhall, and made his concerto debut at the Berlin Philharmonie in 2012.
Petroc Trelawny
presenter
Petroc Trelawny is one of the best-known voices on BBC Radio Three – where he presents the daily Breakfast programme. He was part of the commentary team for BBC Television’s coverage of the Coronation of King Charles III and the funeral of Her Majesty The Queen. He has presented BBC Proms on radio and television for more than two decades and introduces the annual live BBC broadcast of the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Day Concert. Last June he hosted BBC Television’s ‘Cardiff Singer of the World’ for the thirteenth time. He has presented the international telecast of Eurovision Young Musician to more than two dozen countries from Edinburgh and hosted Eurovision Choir live from Gothenburg. He presents performances by the Royal Ballet shown in cinemas around the world, and anchors note-by-note coverage of the Leeds Piano Competition for Medici.tv. In 2015 he hosted the first ever BBC Proms Australia, a week of concerts and recitals in Melbourne broadcast live on ABC Radio; he has also twice hosted BBC Proms Dubai at the new Dubai Opera House.
A frequent contributor ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ (BBC Radio 4), he has written on travel, music and the arts for publications including The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator and Radio Times. He is currently writing a book about Cornwall to published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson next year.
Raised in west Cornwall, his early career includes broadcasting in Hong Kong for the British Forces Broadcasting Service, being part of the launch team for Classic FM and London News Radio, presenting breakfast on BBC Radio Manchester, and working as a presenter for RTE in Ireland. He is President of the Lennox Berkeley Society, Luton Music and the Three Spires Singers. As well as classical music he loves books, travel, food and wine, cinema and theatre. He is a Trustee of the Hall for Cornwall, Truro.
Simon Blendis
leader
Simon joined LMP as leader in 2014. He was a member of the Schubert Ensemble for twenty-three years, from 1995 until the group retired in 2018, leaving a legacy of over 80 commissions, 25 CD recordings and a large library of live performances on YouTube.
Simon is in demand as a guest-leader and has appeared in this role with most of the UK‘s major orchestras. He has also appeared as a guest-director with orchestras such as the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and the Scottish Ensemble. Since 1999 he has shared the position of leader of Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan, with whom he has recorded Vivaldi‘s Four Seasons for the Warner label. As a soloist he has appeared with orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the RPO and the CBSO.
During the Coronavirus lockdowns Simon spent time researching the light music legacy of legendary violinist Max Jaffa. The resulting CD of 25 lost or forgotten gems from this archive, entitled Love is Like a Violin, was released in July 2022 to critical acclaim, and has already garnered over 4 million streams.
Increasingly sought after as a teacher, Simon is a professor of violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Ruth Rogers
leader
Ruth Rogers studied with Itzhak Rashkovsky and Herman Krebbers. Described as “the finest of the younger generation of violinists” (Musical Opinion) and hailed by the Guardian as “superb”, Ruth is in demand as soloist, leader, and chamber musician. She was awarded the Tagore Gold Medal – the Royal College of Music’s highest accolade. She appears regularly at such prestigious venues as The Wigmore Hall with Aquinas Piano Trio and has made many recordings as part of that ensemble, including recent releases by Naxos which have been very well received by the critics.
Ruth was appointed as Leader of the London Mozart Players in 2015 and Leader of the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra in 2022. She worked as Co-Leader of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 2008 until 2012 and appears as a guest leader of many other major orchestras including the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Ruth has played to orphans, landmine victims and malaria patients in refugee camps on the Thailand-Burma border.
Kaupo Kikkas
photographer
Kaupo Kikkas (b. 1983) is an Estonian visual artist and photographer of classical musicians. Inspired by his homeland of Estonia and his own career in the musical arts, much of his work explores themes involving nature and music. He conducted his formal training in photography at Finland’s Visual Arts Institute, and he continues to blend his own musical training into his photographic work of portraits which portray the sensitivity and nuances of classical music.
His recent exhibition “Inner Cosmos” premiered in 2022 at the “Fotografiska” Institute in Tallinn, attracting over 25 000 visitors. His other recent and internationally recognized exhibitions have included Treescape (2016), Ansel (2018), and the multidisciplinary sculpture “Sphere-20” (2021). A number of his photographic collections have been published as books, including Ansel (2018), and The Story of One Hundred (2018), and Inner Cosmos (2022)
Building on his recurrent themes of nature and music, his recent personal projects included a study of graveyards, a portrait series of shale miners, and a documentation of a lost cinema in the Egyptian desert—all of which were well- received in the international media. Many of his projects draw inspiration from the music and his long-time cooperation with the composer Arvo Pärt. He has photographed a number of book- and classical music album covers, and his work often appears in magazines. He was named best commercial portrait photographer at the WPPI Las Vegas print competition in 2013, and was honored as the best Estonian portrait photographer in 2011 at the Baltic’s Photography Festival.
When not working, he can be found purposefully lost in the Northern wilderness or sitting in the concert halls everywhere in the world nurturing connection with his musical roots.
London Mozart Players
orchestra
Don’t let our name mislead you – we don’t just play in London, and we certainly don’t just play Mozart! As well as our residencies here at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, St John’s, Upper Norwood, and in Hastings, we’re well known internationally for working with many of the world’s greatest conductors and soloists. We’re proud to have developed a reputation for making and playing adventurous, ambitious and accessible music, and for being at the forefront of embedding arts and culture into the life of local communities across the UK and beyond.
We work with schools and music hubs around the UK and beyond to inspire the next generation of musicians and music lovers. We’re continuing our long tradition of promoting young talent: Nicola Benedetti, Jacqueline du Pré and Jan Pascal Tortelier are just three of many young musical virtuosi championed early in their careers by us.
After celebrating our 70th birthday in 2019, we soon found ourselves navigating orchestra life during the pandemic. During that time, we created an award-winning digital concert series which reached millions of people – reaffirming our commitment to our audiences.
We launched Croydon’s year as London Borough of Culture in April 2023 with Oratorio of Hope which was shortlisted for the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Series and Events Award.