Robin Ireland Viola and Chamber Music Masterclass

Acclaimed violist Robin Ireland, former member of the Lindsay String Quartet, will be running viola and chamber music masterclasses with Purcell students.

Robin was violist with the celebrated Lindsay String Quartet between 1985 and 2005, and with the Primrose Piano Quartet from 2007 till 2015.He was Head of Chamber Music at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire from 2014 till 2021. He now performs as a soloist and freelance chamber musician and has returned to composing. He is an experienced and enthusiastic viola and violin teacher. He specialises in playing the great unaccompanied works for violin and cello on his beautiful Amati viola.

Robin Ireland was a student at Cambridge University and at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York. He had a short spell as leader of the Las Palmas Symphony Orchestra and subsequently became a founder member of the Piano Quartet, Domus, which toured with its own portable concert hall (a geodesic dome) as well as having great success in more conventional venues.

He has broadcast as a soloist on BBC Radio 3, performed Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the London Mozart Players, and has in his repertoire most of the major works for viola. During 2011 he was chamber music coach at the Yehudi Menuhin School. His orchestral experience includes working as guest principal viola with the CBSO, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, RLPO and Opera North.

Robin is also a composer. His String Quartet was premiered and recorded by the Lindsay String Quartet in 2005, alongside three Duos for Viola with violin, cello and a second viola. His set of 12 Viola Etudes were published by Spartan Press in 2014. He has arranged the three Bach Fugues and the Chaconne for unaccompanied violin for 4 violas (or violins!)

Robin has recorded CDs of unaccompanied Bach transcriptions, including the Chaconne (Quartz Records), the Shostakovich Sonata for Viola and Piano (with Tim Horton, on Nimbus) and the two Brahms Sonatas for Viola and Piano alongside Schubert’s ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata, also with Tim Horton on Nimbus.