18th Haverhill Sinfonia Soloist Competition

15th October 2007

British cellist James Barralet has won the 2007 Haverhill Sinfonia Soloist Competition prize for the 'best performance of a work by a British composer', sponsored by Evans-Pughe Strings.

The annual competition, which took place last month in Haverhill, Suffolk, is now in its 18th year and has become an established event in music diaries, attracting talented musicians from around the world. This year there were a record number of entrants; 171 of 33 nationalities.

The Evans-Pughe Strings’ sponsored prize was presented for James Barralet's performance of Edwin Roxburgh’s Partita, written in 1970 for the cellist Ross Pople as a test piece for his performance in the 1972 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

James, who is 28, began playing the cello at the age of five and has won numerous prizes and awards including the Sir John Barbirolli Cello Prize and Nossek Prize at the RNCM, the Muriel Taylor Cello Scholarship and second prize in the Bromsgrove International Competition.

His particular interest is contemporary music and he has premièred new pieces by composers including Raymond Head, Isabel Klaus, Philippe Kocher and Reto Stadelman. He is a member of Innov'ensemble, a Swiss based group (soprano, flute, viola and cello), which specialises in contemporary music and performance.

London concert

On the 9th January 2008, you can see James performing the Edwin Roxburgh Partita in London at the Purcell Room as part of the Park Lane Group Young Artist series.

If you’re interested in something a little different, from March to July in 2008 James will be playing with the Indian tabla player Sankar Chowdhury and British/Indian pianist Sophia Rahman in a programme to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Indian independence. The first half of the concert will comprise pieces for the cello and piano by western trained composers with an Indian theme - John Mayer and his Indo-jazz fusions, John Schlenk's Indian meditations. The second half will feature bhajans (short, composed 'mini ragas') by the famous singer and composer, Bhimsen Joshi as well as Rabindranath Tagore folk tunes with improvisation, played on the cello with tabla and tanpura accompaniment. For more detalls, click here.

Strings has been sponsoring the Haverhill Soloist Competition for a number of years now. We would like to congratulate all the prize winners of this year's competition, which you can find on the Haverhill Sinfonia website, and look forward to continuing our support in 2008.

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