Harriet Burns & Rebecca Cohen - June 20th, 2025
The Programme
Harriet Burns (soprano), Rebecca Cohen (piano)
Song Recital - reflections on Human Nature.
Including works from:
- Schumann’s Liederkreis
- Lider by Schubert & Richard Strauss, and English Song by
- Copland, Ireland, Stanford, Britten et al.
Harriet Burns (Soprano)
"Brilliant and rich, comfortable even in stratospheric heights" (BBC Music Magazine), British soprano Harriet Burns is in demand for her "polished, witty, expressive and sweet toned" (the Times) singing both in recital and on stage. An acclaimed interpreter of song, Harriet has performed at Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Oxford International Song Festival, Leeds Lieder Festival, International Lied Festival Zeist, Ryedale Festival and de Singel with pianists including James Baillieu, Imogen Cooper, Christopher Glynn, Graham Johnson, Sholto Kynoch, Malcolm Martineau, Joseph Middleton, Ian Tindale and Michael Pandya. With her regular duo-partner, Ian Tindale, she released an album of Schubert Lieder Love's Lasting Power to critical acclaim with Delphian Records in January 2024, their next album with Delphian A short story of falling will be released in 2025.
On the operatic stage, recent roles include Berta (cover, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini) for West Green House Opera, King Harald's Saga (Judith Weir) for Waterperry Opera, Sifare (cover, Mitridate, re di Ponto, Mozart) and Oriana (cover, Amadigi, Handel) for Garsington Opera, Sister Grace (The Angel Esmeralda, Lliam Paterson), Nerina (La Fedeltà premiata, Haydn), and Aminta (Aminta e Fillide, Handel) with Guildhall Opera. In concert, she has sung Thea Musgrave Songs for a Winter's Evening with the Southbank Sinfonia and Gabriella Teychenné, Handel and Mozart arias with Michael Bawtree at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Bach Magnificat and Vivaldi Dixit Dominus with Nicholas McGegan and the Royal Northern Sinfonia at Sage Gateshead, Strauss Four Last Songs with the Oxford Millennium Orchestra, and Handel Messiah with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra.
Harriet is a laureate of numerous international competitions. Successes include 2nd prize and German Lied Award at 2022 Concours Musical International de Montréal (Art Song division) where she also won a Vocal Residency at McGill and Montréal Universities. In 2019, she was awarded 2nd prize at the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera International Song Competition, the Compulsory Song Prize and Recital Prize at the International Vocal Competition in 's-Hertogenbosch and 1st prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at the Wigmore Hall. She is proud to be a City Music Foundation Artist, Samling Insitute Artist, and a Britten-Pears Young Artist. Harriet was a member of the Guildhall Opera School where she graduated with Distinction on the Artist Diploma programme and in 2023 was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Rebecca Cohen (Pianist)
Welsh pianist Rebecca Cohen is in demand as a collaborative pianist specialising in song repertoire. She has appeared in recital in the UK and Europe, partnering leading song performers including Joan Rodgers, Benedict Nelson, James Newby and Claire Barnett-Jones. Concert highlights include London’s Wigmore Hall, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, National Concert Hall, Dublin and the Mozarthaus Vienna.
Recent and forthcoming engagements include a programme of song celebrating Charles Stanford’s legacy at the Great Hall, Belfast which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of the Belfast International Festival of Chamber Music, the world premiere of a BBC Radio 3 Commission by composer Ella Jarman-Pinto as part of International Women’s Day with soprano Nazan Fikret, and recitals in London, Wexford, Drogheda and Aldeburgh where she has recently been invited to curate a concert to mark Benjamin Britten’s birthday in November with tenor Ben Johnson.
Rebecca is Co-Director of Song in the City, an initiative which promotes classical song as an artform introducing it to new audiences through collaborations with performers from other artistic disciplines, commissioning new works and curating social projects.
Currently a member of professorial staff at the Guildhall School, Rebecca co-directs Creative Minds in Song; a project for postgraduate singers, pianists and composers together with writers in the community which inspires the co-creation of brand-new songs. The most recent world premiere performance took place at Milton Court, Barbican Centre, London.
Educated at the University of York, she completed her studies in collaborative piano at the Guildhall School and later at the Franz Schubert Institut in Austria. Competition successes include finalist in the Das Lied International Song Competition alongside soprano Nazan Fikret which featured in the BBC documentary ‘Becoming a Lied Singer: Thomas Quasthoff and the art of German Song’, the Lillian Ash French song prize and the Paul Hamburger Prize for accompaniment awarded by Graham Johnson as part of his prestigious Song Guild.
She is a member of faculty at Junior Trinity Laban where she teaches leads piano performance classes, and has run workshops and masterclasses for various organisations including EPTA and Wigmore Hall Learning.
Rebecca was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA) in 2015 and is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). She holds a PGCert in Performance Teaching in Higher Education.
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