Ian Bostridge’s international recital career has taken him to the Salzburg, Edinburgh, Munich, Vienna, St Petersburg, Aldeburgh and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade Festivals and to the main stages of Carnegie Hall and the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. He has held artistic residencies at the Vienna Konzerthaus and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade (2003/04), a CarteBlanche series with Thomas Quasthoff at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (2004/05), a Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall (2005/06), the Barbican, London (2008), the Luxembourg Philharmonie (2010/11), the Wigmore Hall (2011/12) and Hamburg Laeiszhalle (2012/13). In 2018 Ian began an auspicious Artistic Residency with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the first of its kind for the ensemble.
His recordings have won all the major international record prizes and been nominated for 15 GRAMMYs. They include Schubert Die schöne Müllerin with Graham Johnson (Gramophone Award 1996); Tom Rakewell (The Rake’s Progress) with Sir John Eliot Gardiner (GRAMMY Award, 1999); and Belmonte with William Christie. Under his exclusive contract with Warner Classics, recordings included Schubert Lieder and Schumann Lieder (Gramophone Award 1998), English song and Henze Lieder with Julius Drake, Britten: Our Hunting Fathers with Daniel Harding, Mozart: Idomeneo with Sir Charles Mackerras, Janacek: The Diary of One who Disappeared with Thomas Adès, Schubert with Leif Ove Andsnes, Mitsuko Uchida and Antonio Pappano, Noel Coward with Jeffrey Tate, Britten: Orchestral cycles with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, Wolf with Antonio Pappano, Bach cantatas with Fabio Biondi, Handel arias with Harry Bicket, Britten: Canticles and both Britten: The Turn of the Screw (Gramophone Award, 2003) and Billy Budd (GRAMMY Award, 2010), Adès’ The Tempest (Gramophone Award 2010) and Monteverdi: Orfeo. Recent recordings include Britten songs with Antonio Pappano for Warner Classics, Schubert songs with Julius Drake for Wigmore Hall Live and Shakespeare Songs with Antonio Pappano for Warner Classics (Grammy Award, 2017). In further collaboration with Warner and Antonio Pappano Ian released a disk in Autumn 2018 commemorating the centenary of WW1.
He has worked with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Chicago, Boston, London and BBC Symphony Orchestras, the London, New York, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras and the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam under Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Andrew Davis, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding and Donald Runnicles. He sang the world premiere of Henze Opfergang with the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome under Antonio Pappano.
His operatic appearances have included Lysander (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) for Opera Australia and at the Edinburgh Festival, Handel Jeptha at the Opéra National de Paris, Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) and Jupiter (Semele) for English National Opera and Peter Quint (The Turn of the Screw), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) and Caliban (Adès' The Tempest) for the Royal Opera. For the Bayerische Staatsoper he has sung Nerone (L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Tom Rakewell and Male Chorus (The Rape of Lucretia), and Don Ottavio for the Wiener Staatsoper. He has sung Aschenbach (Death in Venice) for English National Opera and in Brussels and Luxembourg.
Performances during the 2013 Britten anniversary celebrations included War Requiem with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski; Les Illuminations with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Andris Nelsons; and Madwoman (Curlew River) in the Netia Jones staging for the London Barbican, which was also seen in New York and on the west coast of America. In the autumn of 2014 he embarked on a European recital tour of Schubert’s Winterreise with Thomas Adès to coincide with the publication by Faber and Faber in the UK and Knopf in the USA of his book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession. In 2016 Ian was awarded the The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for non-fiction writing for the book that has been translated into a total of twelve languages.
Recent engagements include his operatic debut at La Scala, Milan as Peter Quint, an American recital tour of Winterreisse with Thomas Adès, performances of Hans Zender’s orchestrated version of Schubert’s Winterreise in Taipei, Perth, for Musikkollegium Winterthur and at New York’s Lincoln Center, Berlioz Les nuits d’été with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot, recital tours to both the East and West coasts of America, the title role in Handel Jeptha at the Opéra national de Paris, a residency with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Britten War Requiem with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Antonio Pappano.
Highlights of the 2019/20 season include a U.S. recital tour with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, including Mehldau’s ‘Folly of Desire’, written for Ian, a world premiere of a new commission by Olli Mustonen at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Wigmore Hall, Debussy’s ‘Livre de Baudelaire’ orchestrated and conducted by John Adams with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Aschenbach / Death in Venice at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Mad Woman / Curlew River on tour with the Britten Sinfonia.
He was a fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1992-5) and in 2001 was elected an honorary fellow of the college. In 2003 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Music by the University of St Andrews and in 2010 he was made an honorary fellow of St John’s College Oxford. He was made a CBE in the 2004 New Year’s Honours. In 2014 he was Humanitas Professor of Classical Music at the University of Oxford.
