Stephanie McCallum is an Associate Professor in piano at the
Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. She was born
in Sydney, Australia, and studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of
Music with Alexander Sverjensky and with noted Liszt player, Gordon
Watson. After advanced studies in England with Alkan expert, Ronald
Smith, she presented a critically acclaimed Wigmore Hall debut in
1982 where she gave what is believed to be the first performance of
Alkan’s Chants, Op. 70. She is also credited with the first
complete performance of Alkan’s Trois Grandes Études, Op. 76
in London (see Ronald Smith: Alkan, who was Alkan?, V. II
The Music (London: Kahn & Averill, 1987), p. 90). Stephanie
McCallum has appeared extensively as a soloist in the United
Kingdom, France and Australia, has toured Europe with The Alpha
Centauri Ensemble. Recently she presented lecture recitals at the
Royal College of Music and the Purcell School, London.
Stephanie McCallum has made many appearances as soloist in the
Sydney Festival, and performed in Brighton, Cheltenham,
Huddersfield, and Sydney Spring Festivals. A noted exponent of
contemporary music, Stephanie was a founding member of
the contemporary ensembles AustraLYSIS and Sydney Alpha Ensemble
and was joint artistic director of the latter since its inception.
She has performed with such groups as the Australian Chamber
Orchestra, ELISION and The Australia Ensemble. Stephanie has
appeared as soloist on two CDs by the Sydney Alpha Ensemble,
Strange Attractions, and Clocks (featuring works of
Elena Kats-Chernin). In 2000, she gave the world premier of
Kats-Chernin’s Displaced Dances with the Queensland Symphony
Orchestra, a piano concerto written especially for her and has
performed concertos with the Sydney, Adelaide, Tasmanian and
Canberra Symphony orchestras. With the release in 2006 of a 2 CD
set of Alkan's Douze études dans les tons mineurs,
(described by Hugh Macdonald as "the Alps and the Himalayas of
pianism, the one superimposed on the other") she is the first
pianist ever to have recorded both of Alkan's sets of studies in
the major and the minor keys (opus 35 and opus 39).
Stephanie’s solo recordings for ABC Classics also include a disc
of the music of Satie, a two disc set of the complete piano sonatas
of Weber, Illegal Harmonies: The 20th Century
Piano, and Perfume, a best-selling disc of rare and
exquisite French piano music. Two CDs of music by Liszt, The
Liszt Album and From the Years of Pilgrimage were
released in 2003.
(click here for a complete
list of Stephanie McCallum's recordings)
Stephanie’s recent
performances have included music by Schumann,Liszt, Elliot Carter,
Beethoven, Satie, Alkan and the works of many contemporary
composers.
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