Grace Francis
Biography Grace Francis
Grace Francis
was born in London and attended the Yehudi Menuhin School before studying with Irina Zaritskaya at the Royal College of Music. There she won the Chappell Gold Medal, the highest award for a pianist. She continued her studies with a Wingate Scholarship, also receiving the Hattori Foundation Award and winning in international competition the Negrada Piano House Award at Zagreb.
Grace has given many concerts in the UK: Barbican; Reform Club, Pall Mall; Purcell Room; Wigmore Hall (for the Kirckman Society); St John’s, Smith Square; Rosehill Theatre, Cumbria; Warwick University; the City Music Society (where she performed Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’).
Broadcasts include Liszt’s ‘Hungarian Rhapsody’ with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a BBC Radio 3 programme of works by Chopin, John Field and Viteslav Novak. Grace’s repertoire is wide-ranging: from Haydn to Chopin, Brahms, Liszt and Bartok.
Leading performers such as Mitsuko Uchida and Stephen Hough have praised Grace’s outstanding talent and the leading critic, David Cairns, revealed her to the world in the Sunday Times as a ‘phenomenon… of uncommon fire and energy.’
Grace’s new CD, Brahms & Liszt, released by Quartz, features Brahms’ Variations on a theme of Paganini, Book II, Brahms Sonata No I, Liszt Funerailles, Ave Maria, Sonetto del Petrarca 104 and Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli.
