Biography
Edward Reeve is a London-based conductor, pianist, répétiteur and organist, with many years of professional opera and solo experience, both in the UK and abroad.
Recent highlights​ include Britten's War Requiem and Puccini's La rondine (London Symphony Orchestra), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Garsington), La traviata, Festen, Turandot and Die Walküre (Royal Ballet and Opera), Ariadne auf Naxos (Rouen) and Pelléas et Mélisande (Longborough). Upcoming projects include La bohème and Tosca (Glyndebourne), Ariodante and Siegfried (Royal Ballet and Opera) and Der Rosenkavalier (Garsington Opera).
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From 2022 to 2024, Edward worked full time on the Music Staff at the Royal Opera House as a conductor and répétiteur on the Jette Parker Artist Programme. During his two seasons on the programme, he assisted on Jephtha, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Turandot and The Rape of Lucretia, and was a répétiteur for Così fan tutte, Don Carlo, La bohème, Tannhäuser, Das Rheingold, Elektra and Wozzeck. In April and May 2024, Edward conducted the Britten Sinfonia for a double bill of Bohuslav Martinů's Larmes de couteau and John Harbison's Full Moon in March in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre.
Edward has previously worked at the Bayreuth Festival as Assistant Chorus Master on productions of Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Götterdämmerung and Parsifal. Edward has also worked regularly at Glyndebourne since 2018, including being involved in productions of Saul, Die Zauberflöte, Le nozze di Figaro, Il turco in Italia, La traviata, Tristan und Isolde, Rusalka and KáÅ¥a Kabanová. He has also worked as an Assistant Conductor at Opéra de Rouen Normandie.
In 2016, Edward founded The Empyrean Ensemble, with whom he has conducted symphonic music by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Farrenc, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss, and operas including Handel’s Jephtha, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Così fan tutte, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel and Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. Edward has also directed one-act operas by Pergolesi, Salieri and Blow from the harpsichord. As a choral conductor, projects have included Mozart’s Requiem, Coronation Mass, and Great Mass in C minor, Haydn’s The Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Lobgesang, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, Parry’s Songs of Farewell and Howells’s Requiem.
Recent performances as a piano soloist have included a six-year cycle of Bach’s keyboard works, including recitals of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Partitas, English and French Suites and "Goldberg" Variations. In October 2017, Edward performed his own Wagner piano transcriptions as part of "An Evening of Wagner with Stephen Fry and Edward Reeve". Edward has been fortunate to have had the opportunity to perform concertos with a number of orchestras, including Mozart’s 9th, 23rd, 24th, 25th and 27th Piano Concertos, Beethoven’s 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Piano Concertos, Triple Concerto and Choral Fantasia, Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto, Brahms’s First and Second Piano Concertos, Poulenc’s Piano Concerto, Saint-Saëns’s Fourth Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Second Piano Concerto, Grieg's Piano Concerto and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
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Edward was Organ Scholar at Queens’ College, Cambridge, for three years, graduating with a Double Starred First in Music in June 2017. He was subsequently awarded the Aliki Vatikioti Graduate Scholarship to study for a PhD in the orchestration of Wagner’s operas. Whilst at Cambridge, Edward founded the Cambridge Brahms Festival, an annual week-long celebration of the life and music of Johannes Brahms, which ran for three seasons from 2017 to 2019. As an organist, Edward has given recitals in venues such as St. Paul's Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Reading Town Hall and King's College, St. John's College and Trinity College, Cambridge. Edward spent his gap year as Organ Scholar at Salisbury Cathedral, where he recorded sixteen discs of organ music on the Cathedral organ. Edward also has considerable experience as a continuo player, performing regularly on harpsichord, chamber organ and fortepiano.
