Pianist Julia Hamos combines her American and Hungarian roots with an adventurous spirit to explore the essence of repertoire ranging from Bach to composers living today. Instinctive artistic expression, a forward-thinking attitude, a joyful physical flexibility at the instrument, and an unyielding fascination with the music she plays makes her an artist to watch. 

Julia is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London with Christopher Elton and the Mannes College of Music in New York with Richard Goode, and currently studies with Sir András Schiff at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin and at the Kronberg Academy. She worked with Daniel Barenboim in a series of filmed masterclasses on Beethoven, and delved into György Kurtág’s 8 Pieces, Op. 3 together with the composer at the Budapest Music Center. 

Winner of the Sterndale Bennett Prize for romantic music at the Royal Academy, the Fidelman Prize for contemporary music from the Mannes School of Music, and the Grand Prix of the International Virtuoso Competition in New York City, Julia is in international demand as a soloist and chamber musician. She performs at the Pierre Boulez Saal and Konzerthaus, Berlin, the Wigmore Hall, London, in New York at Lincoln Center, 92nd St. Y and Carnegie Hall, the Liszt Academy in Budapest, as part of the Verbier Festival Academy, at the Prussia Cove festival in Cornwall, and at the Krzyzowa Festival in Kreisau, Poland. 

Recent notable performances are with Christian Tetzlaff and Tabea Zimmermann at Kronberg Academy’s Chamber Music Connects the World and performing the Ligeti Concerto at the Spoleto Festival USA and at the Trasimeno Music Festival in Italy. From 2017-2019 she taught at the 92nd Street Y School of Music in New York. She also gains new insights from working closely with other art fields, resulting in collaborations with the Martha Graham Dance Company, the New English Ballet Theatre and the New School’s Drama Division. 

She will appear in the Building Bridges series of concerts throughout Europe in 2022/23 (at the invitation of Sir András Schiff) in addition to performing at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, in King’s Place, London, at the new Casals Forum in Kronberg, with the National Radio Orchestra of Poland in Wroclaw, and in the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam.  In the summer of 2023 she will record Mozart’s Concerto for three pianos with the Camerata Schweiz conducted by Howard Griffiths under the Alpha Classics label. She currently serves as the assistant to the musicology program at the Barenboim-Said Akademie and is also in the process of recording her first solo CD. 

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Julia Hamos

Nominated onto the Classeek Ambassador Programme by international superstar Sir András Schiff, pianist Julia Hamos brings a programme of works showcasing her boldness as an artist and the breadth of her technical capabilities. She begins with the fourth of Bach’s much-loved ‘French’Suites, a set of pieces initially compiled for Bach’s wife, possibly as a wedding present. These highly stylised Baroque dance movements are split into seven short movements, designed for home music-making for Bach and his students.

Hamos then cycles forward a few centuries to another set of dances, this time based on avariety of asymmetric rhythms common in Bulgarian folk music. Bartók wrote six books of Mikrokosmos, bringing together 153 pieces of music predominantly designed as teaching materials. These Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm are taken from the final book, which hasenjoyed a life beyond the practice room in the concert hall, thanks to its joyful, drivingenergy, playful motifs and grand flourishes. It’s not only the complex rhythms that makethese pieces difficult for the performer – it’s also the use of ‘biomodalism’, a widelyembraced technique at the time, in which two keys are used at the same time to create anunusual tonality. 

Hamos brings us finally to another set of piano pieces inspired by a composer’s great love. Like Bach’s French Suites, Schumann penned Davidsbündlertänze in tribute to ClaraWeick, with whom he was deeply in love at the time of writing. The set of 18 piano pieces for the piano are based on a mazurka by Clara, and the work in its entirety is a very personal tribute to her, containing, as Schumann later put it, ‘many wedding thoughts’. Davidsbündlertänze is full of vibrant characterisations and is named after the composer’s music society. The Davidbündler was a partly real, partly imaginary group of artists created by Schumann in his writings – a group organised to discuss and defend the cause of contemporary music. The two predominant members, Florestan and Eusebius, appear in much of Schumann’s work at this time but are explicitly portrayed in the Davidsbündlertänze. This selection ofintimate character pieces are shown to be musical dialogues between these two figures– symbolising the extroverted and introverted sides of Schumann’s personality respectively.

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Julia Hamos

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