Andrew Schultz’s new Piano Concerto is a large-scale 32-minute work in two movements and was commissioned by Australian, British-based pianist, Rosemary Tuck. She gives the world premiere on 15 October 2025 at Cadogan Hall, London with the New London Orchestra conducted by Adrian Brown.
The work was composed at the composer’s home in Sydney’s beachside Bronte over 2020-21 during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Piano Concerto was commissioned with financial assistance from the Australian Music Foundation, London.
The work is dedicated ‘In memoriam to Richard Meale’ and draws on some of his brief sketches and ideas for a planned piano concerto which he had titled Simurgh. Richard died in 2009 and was one of Australia’s most influential and impressive postwar composers. The ‘Simurgh’ title of his planned concerto refers to the legendary, heroic bird of ancient and modern Persian literature, the epic search for whom leads only back to oneself:
‘The shadow and its maker are one and the same,
so get over surfaces and delve into mysteries.’
[Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds, originally published in the twelfth century]
Richard Meale had been discussing the new work with Rosemary Tuck prior to his death in 2009 and she in turn passed on some of these brief and incomplete sketches to Andrew. Four pages of Richard Meale’s sketches can be seen here with a fifth page, a page of Andrew’s own complete score which at one moment in the second movement takes up the same melodic line of Richard Meale.
The overall shape of the Piano Concerto is similar in design to Andrew’s earlier Violin Concerto (1996). His new Piano Concerto has a slow first movement (Cantilena Ocean Sky: ‘Expansive, tender and slow’) and a fast, virtuosic and dramatic moto perpetuo second movement (Canticle of the Birds: ‘In constant flight – fast’). The first movement also has similar harmonic construction to another recent work by Andrew Schultz, his Golden Dominion for choir and orchestra from 2021.
For more information and to listen online, or on YouTube, to the Violin Concerto and Golden Dominion, click on these links: Violin Concerto and Golden Dominion.
Here is the cadenza from the second movement of the new Piano Concerto performed live by Rosemary Tuck at Cadogan Hall, October 2025.
A recent interview with the composer, including performance of Symphony No. 4 and discussion of the Piano Concerto, is featured in the December 2025, 100% Australian Made podcast from presenter Julie Simonds at 2MBS-FM Fine Music Sydney. Click here to listen at this link.
FURTHER CONCERT INFORMATION
PROGRAM
BRAHMS Schicksalslied, Andrew SCHULTZ Piano Concerto (World Premiere), MOZART Requiem
ARTISTS
Rosemary Tuck piano, Alexandra Flood soprano, Deborah Humble mezzo-soprano, Brad Cooper tenor, Duncan Rock baritone, Adrian Brown conductor, The London Chorus, New London Orchestra
DATE
Wednesday 15 October 2025, 7.30pm
VENUE
Cadogan Hall, London
“The London Chorus, one of London’s most prestigious choirs, with guest conductor Adrian Brown, presents an exciting programme with a strong Australian collaboration. This concert combines a performance by the choir of a much-loved choral masterpiece, Mozart’s Requiem, with the world premiere of Australian composer Andrew Schultz’s Piano Concerto.
The choir starts the evening with Brahms’ Schicksalslied, meaning ‘Song of Destiny’. It is a powerful choral work based on the poem by Friedrich Hölderlin that contrasts the peaceful life of the gods with the suffering of mankind. Andrew Schultz’s beautiful and powerful Piano Concerto, played by renowned Australian pianist Rosemary Tuck, has two movements and continues Brahms’ theme of enlightenment and self-discovery.
The evening ends with a performance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor, with four internationally acclaimed Australian soloists, performed at this concert in memory of the late Ronald Corp who was Musical Director of The London Chorus for more than 30 years.”
Click here for more information and tickets
ROSEMARY TUCK
The Australian pianist Rosemary Tuck was born in Sydney. She studied with John Winther in Canberra, before pursuing further study with Walter Hautzig at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and finally Andrzej Esterhazy, himself a pupil of Heinrich Neuhaus, in Moscow. She represented Australia in a series of recitals in America under the auspices of the Australian-American Bicentennial Foundation, including a recital at Carnegie Hall. She has performed at the Sydney Opera House, the South Bank Centre in London, the National Concert Hall in Dublin and the Aarhus Musikhuset in Denmark in the presence of Queen Margrethe II. Her festival appearances include the Aarhus, Wexford, Vendsyssel and Liszt en Provence. In 2001 she gave the first official performance in the William Vincent Wallace ‘Millennium’ Plaza in Waterford, Ireland. Wallace is a composer she had championed widely, and her Naxos CD Chopinesque was a Gramophone Critics Choice of the year in 2012. She has worked closely with Richard Bonynge, AC, CBE, as both soloist with orchestra and collaborative pianist, and she was artistic director and soloist for his 90th birthday Gala. Together they recorded Czerny’s complete piano concertos and concertinos with the English Chamber Orchestra for Naxos, with the penultimate disc a Musicweb International Recording of the Year 2020. Her many acclaimed recordings also include music by William Vincent Wallace, Albert Ketelbey and Lyadov.
Rosemary Tuck (piano soloist) and Adrian Brown (conductor) on-stage at Cadogan Hall, London, after the first performance in October 2025 (photo: Simon Weir).
CONCERT FLYER
PDF: lc_mozart-requiem-a5-flyer_210825
The image at the top of this post is a digitally stylised impression of a page of Meale’s Simurgh sketch.