JuliusDrake

Press

• Gerald Finley: “Die Schöne Müllerin”

  • To hear the pianist Julius Drake play Die Schöne Müllerin is to ponder whether Schubert’s work is actually a song cycle for piano with vocal accompaniment, instead of the inverse. On a new recording with the Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, Drake doesn’t pull focus from the vocalist so much as he pursues independent ideas that flow harmoniously alongside Finley’s warm singing. The piece justifies this approach: a babbling brook figures prominently in the text and in the keyboard writing, and the final two songs are sung from its perspective. The performers barrel through the opening songs, all robustious and happy-go-lucky, as the narrator, a miller, follows a stream to the maid he loves. Newly awakened to his feelings, Finley’s miller sounds exuberant, vulnerable, and unprepared for the heartbreak to come. Drake weaves his parts crisply, as if they were a counterpoint by Bach—whose name, incidentally, means “brook” in German.

    • Oussama Zahr, The New Yorker

• Hidden treasures from Gustav and Imogen Holst

  Wigmore Hall, London

  Jan 2022

  • Drake conjured myriad pianistic moods with a masterly touch, and (Elizabeth) Watts was majestic in tone and approach, especially in the big moments.

    • Richard Morrison, The Times
    • 04 January 2022

• BBC Radio 3 Special Broadcasts

  Wigmore Hall

  Jun 2020

  • Small-scale works take on new and surprising qualities when listened to with this level of concentration, as if the emotions are suddenly being presented in pop-up form. Schumann fared particularly well; not just in Hough’s defiant opening concert, but in a group of dryly named Canonic Études performed by the oboist Nicholas Daniel and the pianist Julius Drake on Thursday. Winsome melodies acquired a stinging payload of melancholy; rippling piano figuration slipped downwards through Drake’s fingers, and away into nothingness.

    • Richard Bratby, The Spectator
    • 13 June 2020

• The Diary of One Who Disappeared

  Zankel Hall

  Feb 2019

  • Mr. Drake played commandingly, including a piano solo depicting the consummation of this impulsive love — fitful music of hurtling chords and steely harmonies.

    • Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
    • 25 February 2019