Valerie Tryon

Valerie Tryon, (born 5 September 1934) is an English classical pianist.

Having received the ARCM and LRAM diplomas in 1948, she then became one of the youngest students ever to be admitted to the Royal Academy of Music, where from 1950 to 1955 she studied with Eric Grant.

She made her London début in 1953.

While a student, Tryon received the RAM's highest award in piano playing; she also won the coveted Boise Scholarship, which enabled her to study with Jacques Février in Paris (1955–56).

In 1956 she was a prize winner at the Liszt Competition in Budapest.

A recital at the 1959 Cheltenham Festival was acclaimed by some of the UK's foremost critics, and helped launch her adult concert career.

Since 1959, Tryon has appeared as soloist and recitalist in major British concert halls and in Europe, South Africa, Canada, and the United States.

She has performed piano concertos with the Hallé Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and other major orchestras.

The list of conductors with whom she has worked includes Sir Colin Davis, Sir Adrian Boult, Charles Dutoit, Pierre Monteux and Simon Streatfeild.

As a soloist, Tryon is especially noted for her performances of the works of Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff.

Since 1971 she has resided in Canada, but continues to pursue an international performing and recording career, and spends a part of each year in her native Britain.

Among her specialisms is the music of Franz Liszt, of which she has made a number of celebrated recordings.

Currently 'Artist-in-Residence' at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Tryon is active as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, accompanist and adjudicator.

Born in Portsmouth, England, Valerie Tryon was performing regularly in public while still a child.

She toured with the Northern Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of nine, and had broadcast for the BBC before she was 12.

Her 1971 performance with Isaac of Rachmaninov's Cello Sonata is now considered to be a collector's item.

In 1976, Tryon became Associate Professor of Music at McMaster University; in 1980, the post of Artist-in-Residence at McMaster was created for her.

Within North America, Tryon has appeared in such cities as Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Washington, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

In 1981, she entered into a duo partnership with cellist Coenraad Bloemendal that resulted in 6 recording on the Dorian label from 1989 to 1994.

She became a naturalised Canadian citizen in 1986.

Tryon was among the first concert and recording artists of the front rank to recognise the significance of the new music technologies and the internet, and is unique in having created a large number of MIDI sequences for web-based distribution.

In 1986 she was a co-founder (with Gerard Kantarjian) of the Rembrandt Trio, and frequently appears with Camerata and Trio Canada.

Tryon's repertoire is large, ranging from Bach and Scarlatti to contemporary composers; it also includes more than sixty concertos and a significant amount of chamber music.

Among modern British composers, both Alun Hoddinott and John McCabe have dedicated works to her, and she has been active in promoting such Canadian composers as Srul Irving Glick, Murray Adaskin, Milton Barnes and Claude Champagne.

She is well known for her interpretations of the romantics; when the BBC launched its Radio Enterprises record label, some years ago, Tryon's performance of Rachmaninov's 'Etudes Tableaux', op. 39, was the first classical disc to be released.

More recently she has recorded the complete Ballades and Scherzos of Chopin for the CBC's "Musica Viva" label, a disc which Harold Schonberg of the New York Times described as "the best Chopin recording of the past decade."

Likewise, her ongoing series of the complete piano music of Claude Debussy, represents a special passion: she has twice performed this repertoire in a demanding cycle of five successive recitals.

Tryon now broadcasts frequently for the BBC as well as for Canadian and American broadcasting networks.

Her solo performances and appearances with the Rembrandt Trio have been recorded on the Omnibus, Pye, Argo, Lyrita, Educo and CBC labels.

Currently, Tryon is involved with several other world-class pianists in recording the complete works of Franz Liszt for Naxos.

In 1986 the Hungarian Minister of Culture awarded her the Ferenc Liszt Medal of Honour for "outstanding achievement" in the interpretation of Liszt's music.

In 1987 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, and in 1991 was granted an Honorary Licentiate Diploma (LWCM) from the Western Ontario Conservatory of Music (now Conservatory Canada).

Tryon's recording Debussy Songs, performed with soprano Claudette LeBlanc, won a Canadian Juno Award for "best classical album" in 1994.

To prepare her 'live' sequences she uses a Roland FP8-88 weighted MIDI keyboard controller with 'real time' recording techniques; as of 2009 her recordings in this medium number almost 900, most of them produced in collaboration with PG Music, Inc. In 1993 she released with PG the computer-based learning program "Pianist" with 215 MIDI-Sequences of classical pieces.

On the PC-screen you could see a piano keyboard and the notes she played when recording each piece.

One of Tryon's chief enthusiasms is chamber music.

Two of her best-known duo partners in England were Alfredo Campoli (violin) and George Isaac (cello), with both of whom she made a number of significant recordings.

In early 2009, Tryon was in London to record an all-Mozart disc with the LSO (for release on the APR label).

The works recorded were the Piano Concerto in C minor, K.491 (cadenza by Godowsky), Piano Concerto in C major, K.503 (cadenza by Hummel), and the Concert Rondo in A major, K.386.

Tryon was an early recipient of the Harriet Cohen Medal.