Ian Munro
Ian Munro has emerged as one of Australia’s most distinguished and awarded musicians, a pianist and composer whose career has taken him to thirty countries across Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.
His 2003 Premier Grand Prix at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition for composers in Belgium remains a unique achievement for an Australian. It followed multiple prizes in international piano competitions in Spain (Maria Canals), Italy (Busoni), Portugal (Vianna da Motta) and the UK, where second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1987 established his international profile.
After early training in Melbourne with Roy Shepherd, a pupil of Alfred Cortot, he furthered his studies in Vienna, London and Italy with Noretta Conci, Guido Agosti and Michele Campanella. His international career began in the UK, with performances alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia, English Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and wide BBC broadcasts. Elsewhere he has appeared with orchestras in Poland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, the USA, China and New Zealand, and with all the major Australian orchestras, in a repertoire of more than sixty piano concertos. A widely experienced chamber musician, he joined the Australia Ensemble in Sydney in 2000.
His recordings include work for ABC Classics, Hyperion, Cala, Naxos, Marco Polo and Warehouse. Among them are the collected music of Tasmanian composer Katharine Parker and Elena Kats-Chernin’s piano concerto, commissioned for him by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Seasons have brought concertos by Ravel, Munro, Mozart, Kats-Chernin, Gershwin and Edwards, and tours to the UK, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Uzbekistan, Australia and New Zealand in recital, chamber music and concerto. Increasingly in demand as a composer, he was Featured Composer for Musica Viva in 2011; his flute concerto and song cycle Three Birds received their premieres in 2016 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australia Ensemble. Chamber collaboration with cellist Zoe Knighton is heard on Northern Cello (MD3420).
Ian Munro is featured on the following titles
I Was Dancing with a Gnat: Music by Ekaterina Komalkova
Duo pianists Aura Go and Ian Munro bring the music of Russian composer Ekaterina Komalkova to Western listeners for the first time in this generous collection of eighty re-imagined national songs.
Blue Silence: Australian Music for Cello and Piano
This is the first disc of its kind released in Australia: an overview of important works for cello and piano spanning 108 years. The earliest is Grainger’s Scandinavian Suite, a tour de force that deserves a place in the concert hall.
The Waltz Book
The Waltz Book is an impressive achievement by any standard. Andrew Ford has composed a set of 60 waltzes to a commission from pianist Ian Munro, organised so that they are exciting and make a coherent whole.
Blue Rags
Ian Munro plays contemporary piano rags by Elena Kats-Chernin, Ann Ghandar and himself, with Graeme Koehne’s Blues and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s composer-portrait Silhouettes.
Composer
Credit: Liner Notes
Woman's Song: Australian Settings of Poetry by Judith Wright
Elizabeth Campbell has long been a tireless promoter of Australian art song. With Tony Fogg in the 1980s she presented the recital series From Nathan To Now; two decades later she brought that energy to a recording of settings of poetry by Judith Wright.
Composer
Down Longford Way: The Music of Katharine Parker
Katharine “Kitty” Parker (1886–1971) grew up near Longford in northern Tasmania. After early studies in Melbourne she became Percy Grainger’s pupil; he thought her the best student he ever had.
Ann Ghandar: Piano Music
Ann Ghandar teaches composition at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales. A formidable pianist herself, she gave the first Australian performances of Messiaen’s Four Rhythmic Studies and of Ives’ Concord Sonata and First Sonata, and has presented many recitals worldwide.
Credit: Liner Notes
Horn Trios
A dazzling trio in horn trios by Banks, Berkeley and Brahms. Anyone who caught their Australian performances in 1998 will know how wonderfully these musicians work together.
A Garden of Earthly Delights
Three Australian concertos in exuberant performances by the Australian Youth Orchestra, conductor Diego Masson, and soloists David Nuttall, Ian Munro and David Pereira.
Jamaican Rumba, Vol. 1
Recorded for the first time, this is a comprehensive overview of the piano music of Arthur Benjamin, an Australian composer who spent most of his life in Europe and whose work has long been neglected. Ian Munro plays with an astonishing affinity for the music.
Credit: Liner Notes
Mere Bagatelles
As an overview of Australian composition in the 90s, this CD could not be bettered: a musicianly survey of short piano works, with performances of real authority.
Composer
Schubert's Unfinished
Few pianists can complete Schubert’s unfinished piano works with real authority. Ian Munro brings compositional craft to the task, and plays with precision, clarity and insight. This is the first of two discs devoted to the repertoire.
A Patchwork of Shadows
In 1994 Ian Munro was one of only two or three major pianists based in Australia. Passionate about the music of his composer peers, he shaped one of the most carefully chosen programmes then available on disc.
Credit: Liner Notes
Performing as Tall Poppies Ensemble
An occasional studio ensemble of Australian chamber musicians, the Tall Poppies Ensemble records Australian chamber music with crisp brilliance and outstanding precision: outback pulse, contemplative stillness, Asian-inflected lyricism and political colour.
Red Earth
A world-premiere recording of important Australian works for instrumental ensemble. Performers and repertoire were hand-selected for the project, which was funded by the Australia Council.
Compositions by Ian Munro also appear on
Le Tango Perpetuel
Ian Munro, superb pianist and imaginative composer, turns piano masterworks into chamber colour for the Australia Ensemble. The disc also preserves a rare late performance by tenor Gerald English in Satie’s Sports et Divertissements.
Ian Munro also appears on
Chamber of Horrors
Tall Poppies presents chamber music by Elena Kats-Chernin, one of Australia’s most loved composers, in works written for the musicians who play them here.
Rautavaara: Cello Music
All of these cello works by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara appear here in world premiere recordings. Spanning nearly fifty years of his writing, they chart the major compositional influences that shaped his craft.
There Came a Wind like a Bugle: Chamber Music by Nigel Butterley
Chamber works spanning some thirty years by Nigel Butterley, one of Australia’s finest composers, for soloists, song and choir.
Peter Sculthorpe: Music for Cello
The cello has been a major expressive tool for Sculthorpe throughout his career. Parting was conceived in 1947 and waited forty-eight years to appear in this form. The 1959 Sonata lay dormant after its premiere; its material later became the Sonata for Viola and Percussion.
Jamaican Rumba, Vol. 2
Pianist Ian Munro's devotion to Arthur Benjamin drives this second volume of chamber music, recorded with colleagues from the Tall Poppies Ensemble. Major and long-neglected works for violin, viola, cello and clarinet finally receive their due.
Credit: Liner Notes
Harbour
This CD features the remarkable voice of the septuagenarian tenor Gerald English in works written especially for him by Andrew Ford. A star-studded gathering of musicians accompanies him and also plays three solo works.
Carl Vine: Chamber Music, Vol. 2
World premiere recordings of Carl Vine's Second Piano Sonata, played by Michael Kieran Harvey, and Third String Quartet, by the Tall Poppies Quartet (John Harding, Georges Lentz, Esther van Stralen and David Pereira).
An Australian Collection
Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.
Ian Munro is a member of
Tall Poppies Ensemble
An occasional studio ensemble of Australian chamber musicians, the Tall Poppies Ensemble records Australian chamber music with crisp brilliance and outstanding precision: outback pulse, contemplative stillness, Asian-inflected lyricism and political colour.