Photo © Susan Tomes
Susan Tomes is a pianist and writer. She grew up in Edinburgh and was the first woman to be admitted to study music at King’s College, Cambridge. Her discography contains over fifty discs of solo, duo and chamber music as well as hundreds of radio recordings made around the world. Though she performs all kinds of piano music from concertos and recitals to light music, she is especially renowned for her achievements in chamber music. For fifteen years she was the pianist of the chamber group Domus, and for another fifteen she has been the pianist of the Florestan Trio, one of the world’s leading trios. Parallel to her work with these two groups, she has been the pianist of the Gaudier Ensemble for seventeen years.
She is committed to the task of opening up classical music for listeners, and in recent years this has inspired her to write about it as well as performing it. She is the author of two books, Beyond the Notes and A Musician’s Alphabet, and her third book, Out of Silence, will be published in March 2010. She writes for The Guardian, reviews books for The Guardian and The Independent, and has written and presented programmes on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. She also gives masterclasses, sits on competition juries and award panels, gives seminars, and is a keynote speaker at dinners and conferences.
Awards:
- Gramophone Award 1985: Domus piano quartet, for their recording of Fauré piano quartets
- Gramophone Award 1995: Domus piano quartet, for their recording of Fauré piano quintets with Anthony Marwood
- Gramophone Award 1999: Florestan Trio, for their recording of Schumann piano trios
- Classic CD Award 1999: Anthony Marwood and Susan Tomes, for their recording of Dvorak violin and piano duos
- Royal Philharmonic Society Award 2000: Florestan Trio for their achievements in chamber music
