Philip Bullock

Philip Bullock's Knowledge Exchange Fellowship builds on and develops an emerging relationship with London's Wigmore Hall, the UK's leading venue for song and chamber music. In 2023-24, the renowned pianist Iain Burnside will put together a song series focusing on Rachmaninov and his contemporaries, for which Professor Bullock will act as series consultant, drawing on his expertise in Russian music.

This KE Fellowship will allow Professor Bullock to be involved with devising a series from the outset and to put his relationship with the hall and its performers on a more ambitious collaborative footing. In addition to advising on the repertoire to be included in the series, Professor Bullock will provide accompanying programme notes and translations.

In addition to the Wigmore Hall Rachmaninov Song series, Professor Bullock and Iain Burnside have been working with a number of students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, who have been learning some of the songs to be featured in Rachmaninov Song at Wigmore Hall. A number of these were performed at a recital held at the GSMD on 28 February and will feature in a podcast to be broadcast later this summer.

Professor Bullock has been involved in celebrating the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninov’s birth in other ways too. In August 2022, he was scholar-in-residence at the Bard Music Festival at Bard College, New York, for which he edited Rachmaninoff and His World  for the University of Chicago Press and contributed to a number of public events during the course of the festival. More recently, he has recorded a series of podcasts on Rachmaninov’s vocal works – Singers on Singing: Singing Rachmaninoff  – for Thomas Hampson’s Hampsong Foundation. He also contributed to a series of podcasts released by Decca about Rachmaninov’s music more generally.