Richard Lester
Richard Lester has now established an international reputation amongst the great early keyboard players of our time. His many solo engagements have included broadcasts for BBC radio and television, recitals at the Royal Festival Hall South Bank Centre, Wigmore Hall, Bath International Festival, Bruges Festival, concerts abroad - and master classes at Dartington Summer School.
His album of Scarlatti sonatas recorded in the early seventies was chosen as favourite on Dame Janet Baker’s BBC Desert Island Discs and the artists, Sophie Ryder and David Gentleman both chose sonatas from his Nimbus Scarlatti recordings on BBC Radio Three 'Private Passions.'
In an academic capacity he has contributed articles in leading early music publications including the Hungarian book on early music, Regi Zene and also participated in a Scarlatti symposium with Peter Katin, Andreas Staier, Nikolai Demidenko and Yevgeny Sudbin.
In the year 2000, he began a project to record all of Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas for Nimbus Records which received rave reviews on an unprecedented level from recording magazines and international websites. The whole project was completed in 2006 with a personal profile in Gramophone. Since then his contract with Nimbus has included recordings of sonatas by Seixas and Soler, Haydn sonatas on the Schantz fortepiano in the Bath Holbourne Museum and in 2010, a major project to record Frescobaldi's keyboard music on the Giovanni Boni harpsichord (c1619); an instrument it is thought the composer played. The fifth and final CD of the set will include the Canzoni for a variety of instruments performed with Richard's daughter, Elizabeth on Renaissance recorders, Polly Armitage, Renaissance flute and Anna Marlowe Renaissance recorders.
Richard lives in Cirencester with his wife Jackie. His daughter, Elizabeth, read music at York University and graduated in 2011 with BA(Hons). Their son Christian, a sports therapist also lives in Cirencester. Richard has two older sons, Marc and Dominic who also live in the area.