Ian Holtham
Professor Ian Holtham is one of Australia’s most distinguished and highly regarded pianists and pedagogues. His performances of the great Classical and Romantic repertoire have drawn packed houses and strong critical acclaim for many years.
Prof Ian Holtham,
BA(Hons) DipEd PhD (Melb) BMus (Hons) (Durham) FTCL ARCM LRAM LGSM
He has led the Keyboard area at the University of Melbourne since 1998. In 1999 he was invited to become the inaugural Head of Studies at the Australian National Academy of Music, a post he held for a year alongside his university appointment.
Prof Holtham studied with Peter Feuchtwanger, Géza Anda, Geoffrey Parsons and Enrique Barenboim in Europe for more than five years during the 1970s. He also studied composition and conducting at the Guildhall School of Music. He has performed throughout Europe, Asia and Australia, and has broadcast regularly with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation since the late 1970s, appearing as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and with many other orchestras and conductors. One of Australia’s most senior pianists, he has performed and given masterclasses across Australia, Europe and Asia for more than three decades. A Steinway artist, he established the Melbourne Conservatorium as the only institution of higher musical training in the Southern Hemisphere that is a Steinway School. He has been Chair of the Australian Music Examinations Board in Victoria for most of this century, chairs the national AMEB piano syllabus, and has served five terms as elected Federal Chair of the AMEB.
Prof Holtham has published a seminal text on piano technique and was piano adviser and contributor to the Oxford Companion to Australian Music. He has edited both editions of the AMEB Technical Work Book and published articles on music in the Australian Book Review. He has judged, and often chaired, virtually all the major musical awards and scholarships in Australia.
Since 1995 he has released a solo piano CD almost every year. His first, Études (MD 3134), contained Chopin’s complete Études, Opp. 10 and 25. That recording and the many that followed, spanning a vast range of repertoire, have met with wide critical acclaim. Among later releases on ABC Classics are Forest Scenes: the piano music of Robert Schumann and Beethoven: the last three Sonatas, the latter recorded on each of the three Melba Hall Steinways. In 2010 he issued Chopin Showcase (MD 3336), marking the bicentenary of the composer’s birth. His recorded Chopin includes the complete Études, Preludes, Ballades, Scherzi and Impromptus – a discography unique in Australian pianism. His commitment to Australian music is equally strong: Inspirations (TP227), released late in 2013, presents eight new piano works written specifically for him by Australian composers.
Ian Holtham is featured on the following titles
Inspirations
They say there is nothing new under the sun. New works of art challenge this notion. In this piano recording by Ian Holtham, all the works, commissioned from his Melbourne composer colleagues, are responses to major works in the piano literature. Something new has arisen, phoenix-like, out of something old.
Romantic Rarities
Ian Holtham is a distinguished Melbourne pianist with a long discography of Classical and Romantic repertoire, especially Chopin. On his first Tall Poppies release he turns to relatively rare works from the piano literature.
Credit: Liner Notes