Daniel and Joseph Tong – piano

Brothers Joseph and Daniel Tong have been performing together for over thirty years, including recitals at the Purcell Room and Conway Hall in London, St George’s Bristol and appearances on Radio 3 ‘In Tune’. Their programme includes three masterpieces for piano duet by Schubert – the Rondo in A major, Variations on an Original Theme in A flat and the celebrated Fantasie in F minor.

Daniel Tong was born in Cornwall and studied in London. His musical life is spent performing as soloist and chamber musician, writing and teaching. Outside the UK he has recently performed in France, Belgium and Portugal. After his first solo CD of works by Schubert, Gramophone magazine described him as “an extraordinarily sympathetic Schubertian.” He has performed concertos at St Martin-in-the-Fields and Kings Place in London, and this season is soloist in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto (London) and Shostakovich No. 2 (Birmingham). He has recorded the complete works for cello and piano by Beethoven on period instruments with Robin Michael for Resonus Classics, and his first solo release on fortepiano (2022), the Op. 10 Beethoven Sonatas, has gathered considerable attention.

Praised by The Guardian for his ‘masterly pianism’, Daniel has collaborated with the Elias, Navarra, Heath, Callino, Dante, Carducci and Allegri quartets as well as singers Ivan Ludlow, James Gilchrist, Mary Bevan, Stephan Loges and Paul Agnew. Daniel’s London Bridge Trio have been regular visitors to London’s Wigmore Hall and BBC Radio 3 for twenty years, with a substantial discography that includes a shortlisting for the Gramophone Chamber Music Award (Frank Bridge Chamber Works Vol. II on Dutton). Each year Daniel plays with an array of wonderful individual artists, often at his own chamber festival: founded in 1999, the Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival attracts many renowned chamber musicians to spend ten days making music in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Daniel’s Beethoven Plus project has been a vibrant addition to his life over recent years. Alongside Krysia Osostowicz, he commissioned ten new works to partner the Beethoven Sonatas for Piano and Violin, premiering all during 2015. The duo went on to perform the cycle numerous times across the UK, culminating at Cedars Hall, Wells, where they recorded all twenty works for SOMM Recordings. The cycle became the subject of Daniel’s PhD and he is currently writing a book on Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas for publication in 2024.

Daniel is Head of Piano in Chamber Music at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Head of Performance at the Junior Department of the Royal Academy of Music. For seven years he has directed a summer course for talented young musicians as part of the Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival.

Joseph Tong has established a reputation as one of the most versatile and imaginative pianists of his generation. Much in demand as a soloist, duo pianist and chamber musician, Joseph made his London Wigmore Hall debut in 1997 as winner of the Maisie Lewis Young Artists Award and now gives regular recitals throughout the UK and abroad.

His CD of works by Robert Schumann for the Quartz label, recorded in 2018 at the Sendesaal in Bremen, was awarded Instrumental Choice of the month by BBC Music Magazine as well as drawing critical praise in the Sunday Times. At the beginning of 2022, Joseph performed music by Schumann and Sibelius live on Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’ programme and last autumn he returned to Wigmore Hall in London for a solo recital to mark 200 years since Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy was composed.

Other recent projects include a new commission from the British composer David Matthews, a set of five pieces inspired by trees which Joseph premiered at the Three Choirs Festival held in Hereford last summer. He also performed the new work at the Sibelius Museum in Turku, Finland,
last August as part of a collaboration with the Museum Foundation which also supported the recording of a third album of Sibelius’s solo piano music for Quartz, to be released later this year.

Joseph’s ongoing Sibelius recording project has seen two CDs released on the Quartz label to widespread critical acclaim. Joseph has already made several concert visits to Finland, including recitals at Ainola on the composer’s original Steinway grand piano, the Korpo Sibelius Festival, Helsinki Music Centre (Camerata Hall) and Hämeenlinna City Hall.
Other recent highlights have included recitals in Germany and Spain, at St John’s, Smith Square in London, the Presteigne Festival, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, St George’s Bristol, the Jacqueline du Pré Hall in Oxford, Newport Cathedral and performances at the Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival.

He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in 2008 and is a visiting piano teacher at Wells Cathedral School in Somerset. Joseph’s Sibelius recording with the violinist Fenella Humphreys was released on the Resonus Classics label last year and was featured as ‘Chamber Choice’ in BBC Music Magazine.