This month, Linn Records will release the next three recordings in the Royal
Academy of Music Bicentenary series. Each of the three featured alumni –
Julie Park, Camilla Harris and Ossian Huskinson – were awarded Royal
Academy of Music Bicentenary Scholarships in 2021. The recordings will be
released digitally over three weeks in August.
Julie Park has devoted her debut disc recorded with pianist Michel Xie to the
music of York Bowen. The two featured works, the Viola Concerto in C minor,
Op. 25 and the Phantasy in F, Op. 54 were dedicated to Lionel Tertis. Violist
Julie Park was the grand winner of the Academy’s Bicentenary Prize
Competition held at the Wigmore Hall and has recently been appointed
Associate Principal Violist of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Camilla Harris’s programme interweaves the themes of love, longing and the
female muse in works by Liszt, Bachelet, Rachmaninov and Grieg
accompanied by Natalie Burch. Lyric soprano Camilla Harris graduated from
the Royal Academy of Music in 2021 and, this summer, was a principal artist
at the Garsington Festival singing the role of Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Cosi fan
tutte.
Bass-baritone Ossian Huskinson chose to explore the archetype of the
vagabond in the English song repertoire for his debut disc and taking as his
starting point Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel, has included songs by
Ernest Farrar, Peter Warlock and Michael Head, concluding with Vaughan
Williams’s Linden Lea. Ossian Huskinson is a recent graduate of the
Academy; was a Garsington Young Artist in 2021; and has been selected for
the prestigious roster of Harewood Young Artists at English National Opera.
Linn’s Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Series launched in April 2020
with digital recordings from Yoanna Prodanova (cello); Claudia Lucia
Lamanna (harp); Emily Nebel (violin); and Anna Geniushene (piano). In
December 2021, Linn released a further four recordings featuring Robert
Balanas (violin); Margarita Balanas (cello); Ariel Lanyi (piano); and James
Orford (organ).
The Academy’s Principal, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood said: “Our ongoing
relationship with Linn reflects a collaborative ideal of exposing the very best
young musicians to the unique artistic challenges and opportunities of the
studio within an educational context. The productions values of Linn are second
to none and that means the results are especially exciting for these young
musicians, who deserve to sound as good as they are.”