Performer Biography

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), the Barbican, London (2008), the Luxembourg Philharmonie (2010–11), the Wigmore Hall (2011–12) and Hamburg Laeiszhalle (2012–13). Ian has also participated in a Carte-Blanche series with Thomas Quasthoff at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (2004–05) and a Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall (2005–06). In the 2018–19 season Ian undertook 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. His recording for Pentatone of Schubert’s Winterreise with Thomas Adès won the Vocal Recording of the Year 2020 in the International Classical Music Awards. Other recordings include Schubert’s 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/Die Entführung aus dem Serail with William Christie. Under his exclusive contract with Warner Classics, recordings included Schubert and Schumann Lieder (Gramophone Award 1998), The English Songbook and Henze Lieder with Julius Drake, Britten’s Our Hunting Fathers with Daniel Harding, Mozart’s Idomeneo with Sir Charles Mackerras, Janáček’s The Diary of One who Disappeared with Thomas Adès, Schubert with Leif Ove Andsnes, Mitsuko Uchida and Sir Antonio Pappano, Noel Coward with Jeffrey Tate, Britten Orchestral cycles with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, Wolf with Pappano, Bach cantatas with Fabio Biondi, Handel arias with Harry Bicket, Britten Canticles and both Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (Gramophone Award, 2003) and Billy Budd (Grammy© Award, 2010), Adès’s The Tempest (Gramophone Award 2010) and Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Recent recordings include Respighi Songs and Die schöne Mullerin with Saskia Giorgini for Pentatone, Shakespeare songs (Grammy© Award, 2017) and Requiem: The Pity of War with Pappano for Warner Classics, as well as Berlioz’s Les Nuits d'Eté, Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Debussy’s Le Livre de Baudelaire arr. John Adams with Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

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, Sir Antonio Pappano, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding and Donald Runnicles. He sang the world premiere of Henze’s Opfergang with the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome under Pappano.

His operatic appearances have included Aschenbach/Death in Venice for the Deutsche Oper, Peter Quint/The Turn of the Screw for the Teatro alla Scala, Handel’s Jeptha for Opéra National de Paris, Lysander/A Midsummer Night's Dream for Opera Australia and at the Edinburgh Festival, Nerone/L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Tom Rakewell and Male Choru/The Rape of Lucretia for the Bayerische Staatsoper, Don Ottavio/Don Giovanni for the Wiener Staatsoper, Tamino/Die Zauberflöte, Aschenbach/Death in Venice and Jupiter/Semele for the English National Opera, Peter Quint/The Turn of the Screw, Don Ottavio/Don Giovanni and Caliban/The Tempest for the Royal Opera House and Madwoman/Curlew River in the Netia Jones’s staging for the London Barbican, which was also seen in New York and on the west coast of America.

His book Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, 2016) was published by Faber and Faber in the UK and Knopf in the USA in 2014. In the 2020–21 season Ian gave a lecture series for the University of Chicago and took up the position of Visiting Professor at the Munich Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

He was a fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1992–95) 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.