Programme (draft):

Mozart - Sonata (tbc)

Schubert - Drei Klavierstuckes

Sibelius - Impromptus op.5

Khachaturian - Piano Sonata (Revised Version)

Iyad Sughayer, piano

Chosen as ‘One to Watch’ by International Piano Magazine, Iyad’s debut album Khachaturian Piano Works for BIS Records was described by Gramophone as “exhilarating and delivered with perfect clarity” and “an outstanding debut” by BBC Music Magazine. Iyad’s second recording for BIS with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Andrew Litton was released to critical acclaim in autumn 2022.

Nominated as a 2022 Rising Star Artist by Classic FM, Iyad was a prize-winner at the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) International Auditions in 2021.

Highlights of Iyad’s 23/24 season include a return to the BBC National Orchestravof Wales for Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2, performances at the Berlin Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Lammermuir Festival and Barber Institute Birmingham, plus a series of recitals at the Leicester International Music Festival performing the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas alongside newly commissioned pieces inspired by these great works.

In the 2022/23 season Iyad returned to the Wigmore Hall, as soloist and chamber musician, and gave recitals in the Royal Concert Hall Nottingham International Piano series, Perth Concert Hall and Bath Festivals. Previous concert highlights include recitals at the Brighton Festival, Lake District Summer Music Festival, Bridgewater Hall & Stoller Hall in Manchester (broadcast by BBC Radio 3), Leeds Town Hall, the Laeiszhalle (Hamburg) and Festival Musique D’Abord (France).

In 2020 he contributed to a BBC Arabic documentary ‘London Lockdown’, in which he took part as a character and recorded the soundtrack for the music.

Iyad regularly collaborates with oboist Armand Djikoloum, with forthcoming concerts across the UK including at the Lammermuir Festival and Leeds International Concert series.

As soloist Iyad has appeared with leading orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, European Union Chamber Orchestra, the Cairo and Amman Symphony Orchestras.
In 2022 Iyad co-founded and launched a new specialist music school, the Mashrek Academy of Music, with the Mashrek International School in Amman. The Academy welcomes students from across Jordan, discovering and nurturing a new generation of creators and musicians.

Born in Amman, the Jordanian-Palestinian pianist, Iyad studied at Chetham’s School of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance where he won the College’s prestigious Gold Medal. He completed his International Artist Diploma at the RNCM in 2019 and in the same year became a City Music Foundation Artist. In 2021 he was made an Associate of the Royal Northern College of Music (ARNCM).

Reviews:

"Praise be to Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer, Andrew Litton conducting a BBC National Orchestra of Wales on top form and the conductor’s regular producer Andrew Keener for keeping it all as clean and clear as possible….Sughayer makes effortless work of all the numbers."
BBC Music Magazine / BIS Khachaturian Piano Concerto; Masquerade Suite; Concerto-Rhapsody / October 2022 / Performance ***** Recording *****

"After impressing with his disc of the composer's solo piano music, Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer returns with Khachaturian's two piano concertante works, combining technical bravura with lyricism into persuasive performances…Sughayer's sense of the music's structural elements plays an important role, full of wonderful articulations and firm fingers, yet woven in with those wonderful tunes…Sughayer is positively dazzling in the fistfuls of notes required of him in the work's closing pages."
Planet Hugill / BIS Khachaturian Piano Concerto; Masquerade Suite; Concerto-Rhapsody / October 2022

He captures the music’s essence with such a close sense of recreative identity that it feels on occasion as though he could be composing it as he goes along. An outstanding debut.
BBC Music Magazine / Khachaturian: Piano Works CD (BIS Records) / March 2020

…exhilarating and delivered with perfect clarity ... It’s a release that leaves one eager to hear Sughayer in other repertory while eloquently arguing that Khachaturian’s piano music deserves re-evaluation as something more than teaching pieces.
Gramophone / Khachaturian: Piano Works CD (BIS Records) / February 2020

…this Jordanian-Palestinian player shines
International Piano Magazine / Khachaturian: Piano Works CD (BIS Records) / February 2020

…his wonderfully confident pianism unfolds with a sense of ease.
Piano Journal / Khachaturian: Piano Works CD (BIS Records) / December 2019

Sughayer’s delivery was wonderfully deft but direct, light yet assertive, witty as well as profound.
Sussex Express / Brighton Festival / May 2022

Reviews updated September 2023