Acclaimed by audiences and critics
alike for the verve, commitment and intelligence of his performances,
Rupert Luck studied the violin with James Coles before reading Music
at Cambridge University, where he was also an Instrumental Exhibitioner.
After receiving his first degree, he was awarded a postgraduate scholarship
to continue his violin studies with the eminent teacher Simon Fischer
and thereafter won a Distinction for his degree of Master of Music.
He now enjoys a career as a soloist and recitalist, appearing throughout
Britain and Europe: recent performances have included venues in Birmingham
(at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts), Cambridge (including a recital
as part of the 2008 Vaughan Williams Festival), Canterbury, Cheltenham,
Dorchester-on-Thames (as part of the 2010 English Music Festival),
Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Oxford, Warwick and Winchester
as well as appearances in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland
and the USA. In September 2007 he gave the Holst Birthday
Celebration Recital, an annual event hosted by the Trustees of the
composer’s Birthplace Museum, when he included in his programme works
for viola played on Holst’s own instrument. During Autumn
2007 he gave in London the first complete cycle of the newly-published Sonatas for Violin and Piano by C. Hubert H. Parry; his recording
of these works, the first to be issued in twenty-five years, was released
last July on the label Radegund Records (RR CD018-01) and was praised
on Amazon.co.uk for its “finely-crafted and subtly-nuanced performances” and
for “the warm generosity of Luck’s violin tone”. The CD has
recently also become available in the USA.
As a chamber musician,
his performances include radio recordings for the BBC and the Swiss
Broadcasting Corporation as well as concert appearances alongside
the soprano Jessye Norman and the jazz saxophonist Barbara Thomson.
Appearances with his piano trio, the Theophilus, including their London
debut in June 2002 at St Martin-in-the-Fields and a concert tour of
Cuba, under the auspices of the British Arts Council, the following
November, attracted much commendation. More recently, he has
performed alongside the pianist Vassily Lobanov and the cellist
Claus Kangiesser, both professors at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne,
and has also collaborated with the highly-regarded violinist and composer
Simos Papanas, of whose ‘Suite for George Demertzis’ he gave the UK
première in London in December 2006. In October 2008 he
gave the world première of a Violin Sonata written specially for him
by Stephen Matthews, his recording of which is scheduled for release
later in 2010; and a commission from the composer Bennett Zon is currently
in progress. He has recently completed a highly-acclaimed recital
tour of the Netherlands, where his programmes featured Violin Sonatas
by the Dutch composer Julius Röntgen. Future engagements include
a recital at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, in 2010; a return
visit to the Barber Institute in 2011; and a return visit to the Netherlands,
also in 2011. He will be making the world première recording
of the A major Violin Sonata of Walford Davies for E. M. Records
later this year.
As well as his busy schedule as a soloist and
chamber musician, Rupert is establishing a reputation as a writer
and speaker on the performing aspects of music. In May last
year he gave a lecture-recital at University College London on the
parallels between J. S. Bach’s Partita in D minor and the ‘Suite for
George Demertzis’ by Simos Papanas; an article on Bliss’s ‘Theme
and Cadenza’ for violin was published in Autumn 2007 by The Arthur
Bliss Society; and a paper on Parry’s Violin Sonatas appeared
in the British Music Society Newsletter in June 2008. With the
kind permission of the Royal College of Music and of Dr Anthony Wilson,
he is currently preparing a performing edition of the unpublished
Violin Sonatas by Walford Davies, the manuscripts of which are housed
in the RCM Library Archive; and, with the permission of The Bliss
Trust, has prepared a performing edition of the Violin Sonata by Arthur
Bliss, of which he gave the world première performance at the 2010
English Music Festival. Two articles, on York Bowen’s Violin
Sonata and on the A major Sonata of Walford Davies, appeared
in ‘Spirit of England’, the newsletter of the English Music Festival,
in 2009 and 2010 respectively; and in May, before his recital in the
Festival, he was interviewed live on ‘In Tune’ (BBC Radio 3),
discussing the Sonatas and performing movements from them. In
October he will conduct masterclasses for the Music Faculty of Cambridge
University and will also present a seminar on ‘Practical Approaches
to Performance’.
