"Le Page was both virtuoso and poet."
The Classical Source
"Quietly ecstatic..."
The Guardian
"David Le Page and Catherine Leech brought bustling wizardry to their solo parts in a work which should be added to the canon of English string orchestra works without delay."
Birmingham Post
"In Bartok's Rumanian Dances and in the concert's culminating work, Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme By Thomas Tallis, it was the consistently sweet-toned solos of leader David Le Page that stood out."
The Guardian
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David Le Page
Leader
David Le Page was born in Guernsey and began learning the violin at the age of seven. He gained a place at the Yehudi Menuhin school, aged eleven, where he studied with Margaret Norris and received chamber music coaching from Peter Norris and Hans Keller. He was a prize winner in both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the Yehudi Menuhin competition and completed his studies in Bern with Igor Ozim and in London with Sidney Griller.
David was appointed leader of the Orchestra of the Swan in 1999 and he regularly appears as soloist and director with the orchestra. Solo appearances in the 2006-7 season have included the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante and premieres of Paul Patterson's Allusions for two solo violins and orchestra, and Gonzalez by Joe Cutler. Next season David will give four performances of Piazzolla's 'Four Seasons' including one at the newly refurbished Birmingham Town Hall.
David has also worked with a diverse selection of artists and ensembles including the Kreutzer quartet, Billy Jenkins, Thomas Ades, Chroma, Paul Zukovsky, Keith Tippett, Errolyn Wallen, Guy Johnson, Julius Drake, Abdullah Ibrahim, John Tavener, Sir Michael Tippett, Phillip Sheppard, Lucy Bailey, the Medici quartet, Charles Owen, the Gogmagogs and the St Petersburg quartet. He is director of the English Mozart Ensemble and has formed his own groups the Le Page Ensemble, Camera Obscura and Subway Piranhas.
Since 1995 he has been the violinist with the Composers Ensemble giving world premieres of works by John Woolrich, David Matthews, Gerald Barry, Tansy Davies and Julian Anderson amongst others. In 2006 they gave the first performance of Thomas Ades' Court Studies at the Aldeburgh festival with the composer at the piano. The ensemble has made many recordings for the BBC and has appeared at most of the major festivals in the UK including Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Brighton and Spitalfields.
Recordings include the complete Tippett quartets, Shostakovich quartets, Keith Tippett's piano quintet Linuckea, music by Gerald Barry, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Frantic Mid-Atlantic with Evelyn Ficarra, The Rune of Hospitality' with Mark Chambers and the Goldberg Variations with Le Page Ensemble. He is currently recording the Sonatas and Partitas by Bach and an album of his own material As The Crow Flies due for release in 2007. |
