Ian Holtham
Professor Ian Holtham is one of Australia’s most distinguished and highly regarded pianists and pedagogues. His performances of the great Classical and Romantic repertoire have drawn packed houses and strong critical acclaim for many years.
Prof Ian Holtham,
BA(Hons) DipEd PhD (Melb) BMus (Hons) (Durham) FTCL ARCM LRAM LGSM
He has led the Keyboard area at the University of Melbourne since 1998. In 1999 he was invited to become the inaugural Head of Studies at the Australian National Academy of Music, a post he held for a year alongside his university appointment.
Prof Holtham studied with Peter Feuchtwanger, Géza Anda, Geoffrey Parsons and Enrique Barenboim in Europe for more than five years during the 1970s. He also studied composition and conducting at the Guildhall School of Music. He has performed throughout Europe, Asia and Australia, and has broadcast regularly with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation since the late 1970s, appearing as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and with many other orchestras and conductors. One of Australia’s most senior pianists, he has performed and given masterclasses across Australia, Europe and Asia for more than three decades. A Steinway artist, he established the Melbourne Conservatorium as the only institution of higher musical training in the Southern Hemisphere that is a Steinway School. He has been Chair of the Australian Music Examinations Board in Victoria for most of this century, chairs the national AMEB piano syllabus, and has served five terms as elected Federal Chair of the AMEB.
Prof Holtham has published a seminal text on piano technique and was piano adviser and contributor to the Oxford Companion to Australian Music. He has edited both editions of the AMEB Technical Work Book and published articles on music in the Australian Book Review. He has judged, and often chaired, virtually all the major musical awards and scholarships in Australia.
Since 1995 he has released a solo piano CD almost every year. His first, Études (MD 3134), contained Chopin’s complete Études, Opp. 10 and 25. That recording and the many that followed, spanning a vast range of repertoire, have met with wide critical acclaim. Among later releases on ABC Classics are Forest Scenes: the piano music of Robert Schumann and Beethoven: the last three Sonatas, the latter recorded on each of the three Melba Hall Steinways. In 2010 he issued Chopin Showcase (MD 3336), marking the bicentenary of the composer’s birth. His recorded Chopin includes the complete Études, Preludes, Ballades, Scherzi and Impromptus – a discography unique in Australian pianism. His commitment to Australian music is equally strong: Inspirations (TP227), released late in 2013, presents eight new piano works written specifically for him by Australian composers.
Press quotes
One must still admire Holtham’s tenacity in such difficult repertory and his maintenance of clarity and musicianship in the face of such odds.
shows the mastery and control of the keyboard which makes Holtham such an exciting performer … Melbourne is indeed lucky to have such a resident talent.
Holtham is one of this country's finest pianists... beautifully moulded and expressive performances.
Holtham is a master of poise; his playing holds in tension the ruminative and dramatic aspects of the music
Ian Holtham is featured on the following titles
Scarlatti's Steinways at Melbourne
The remarkable output of 555 keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) remains one of the most original contributions in Western art music. Pianist Ian Holtham selects 23 sonatas, sequenced into four Baroque tonal groupings and recorded on the Conservatorium’s four Steinway Model Ds.
Bach's Tonal Soundscape
Ian Holtham’s distinctive approach to Bach’s monumental Well-Tempered Clavier lets listeners hear the preludes and fugues organised by key, rather than the traditional and more artificial order by book.
Chopin Showcase
Ian Holtham, piano. The genesis of this recording was to assemble a number of the composer’s most attractive and original works as a mark of homage to one of the most outstandingly innovative and important composers for the piano who has ever lived.
Chopin: Complete Ballades and Scherzi
Having successfully recorded Chopin's complete études, pianist Ian Holtham turns to the four ballades and four scherzi: eight large-scale works among the composer's most individual, characteristic and dramatic pieces.
Mozart
Having already tackled Liszt, Chopin and Godowsky, Ian Holtham turns to Mozart in this solo piano recital for Move, continuing his survey of the virtuoso keyboard repertoire.
Giants in the Land
Recorded in Melba Hall, this world premiere finds Melbourne pianist Ian Holtham in a brilliant cross-section of Australian contemporary piano works by Brenton Broadstock, Linda Kouvaras, Stephen Ingham, Stuart Greenbaum, Johanna Selleck and Christine McCombe.
A Liszt Recital
Ian Holtham's acclaimed recital showcases works by the great, enigmatic, and quintessentially romantic pianist and composer Franz Liszt. The programme centres on Holtham's masterful reading of the monumental Sonata in B minor.
Pictures
In Pictures, Ian Holtham leads the listener through Romantic piano masterpieces: Mussorgsky’s gallery cycle Pictures at an Exhibition, Schumann’s masked-ball Carnaval, and Tchaikovsky’s rustic Doumka.
Acts of Homage
Acclaimed pianist Ian Holtham marks the centenary of Brahms’s death and the bicentenary of Schubert’s birth. The programme sets Schubert’s late impromptus beside Brahms’s Handel Variations and late piano pieces, with Godowsky’s song transcriptions as a further homage.
Arranger
Imo Pectore
With Ian Holtham as guide, Imo Pectore – ‘music from the inner-most recesses of the heart’ – gathers four works of private intensity by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Rachmaninov.
Études
Ian Holtham, piano. Chopin’s twenty-four Études, Op. 10 and Op. 25: perfect examples of their genre, wonderfully innovative in texture and uncompromisingly challenging in technical difficulty.
Ian Holtham also appears on
Bright Tracks
Winner of the 1998 ABC Classic FM Listeners’ Choice Award, this double CD gathers chamber music by Brenton Broadstock, one of Australia’s most established and respected composers.