Anna Tilbrook

Anna Tilbrook is one of Britain’s most exciting pianists, with a considerable reputation in song recitals and chamber music. She made her debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1999 and has since become a regular performer at Europe’s major concert halls and festivals.

Anna has collaborated with many leading singers and instrumentalists including James Gilchrist, Lucy Crowe, Sarah Tynan, Emma Bell, Barbara Hannigan, Willard White, Ashley Riches, Stephan Loges, Chris Maltman, Ian Bostridge, Barbara Bonney, Victoria Simmonds, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Natalie Clein, Nick Daniel, Philip Dukes, Guy Johnston, Louisa Tuck and Jack Liebeck. For Welsh National Opera she has accompanied Angela Gheorghiu, Jose Carreras and Bryn Terfel in televised concerts.

With the distinguished British tenor James Gilchrist she has made acclaimed recordings of 20th-century English song for Linn records, including Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge (a finalist in the Gramophone Awards 2008), the cycles for tenor and piano by Gerald Finzi, songs by Britten and Leighton and the song cycles of Robert Schumann. For Chandos, James and Anna recorded a disc of Songs by Lennox Berkeley and most recently the Songs and Chamber Music of Vaughan Williams with Philip Dukes.

In 2009 they embarked on a series of recordings for Orchid records of the Schubert Song Cycles and their disc of Die Schone Mullerin received great critical acclaim and was Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, November 2009. Schubert’s Schwanengesang along with Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte was released early in 2011 and their recording of Winterreise was Record of the week in The Independent and was made recording of the month in the 2011 Christmas issue of BBC Music Magazine – “It is a profoundly considered reading, considered enough for some of the songs to be as penetrating as in almost any performance I have heard.” (Michael Tanner).

With String Quartets such as the Carducci, Fitzwilliam, Elias, Coull, Barbirolli and Sacconi, she has performed a wide range of chamber music from Mozart’s Piano Concertos K414 and K415 to the Piano Quartets and Quintets of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovich, Brahms, Elgar, Bridge and Fauré. Recent engagements have included her Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam debut with Lucy Crowe, recitals in Carnegie Hall, New York, Wigmore Hall, deSingel Antwerp, the Anima Mundi festival in Pisa, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Musee des Tissus Lyon, Wroclaw Cantans and appearances at the Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Oxford Lieder and West Cork Chamber Music Festivals. Anna regularly broadcasts for Radio 3 and has also curated   a number of series of concerts for them including in 2017 marking Hull as City of Culture with James Gilchrist and the Sacconi Quartet and in April 2018 a Big Chamber Day at Saffron Hall entitled ‘Tchaikovsky and his world’ featuring singers Anush Hovhannisyan, Caitlin Hulcup, Alessandro Fisher and Ashley Riches.

Born in Hertfordshire, Anna studied music at York University and at the Royal Academy of Music with Julius Drake, where she was awarded a Fellowship and in 2009 became an Associate. She also won many major international accompaniment prizes including the AESS Bluthner prize and the award for an outstanding woman musician from the ROSL.

Updated: 21/05/2023