Concert 1: “Piano Tales” – Christopher White
Christopher White has worked as repetiteur, coach, assistant conductor and language coach with some of the world’s leading opera companies.He studied piano and piano accompaniment, and completed his Doctoral work on the music of Gustav Mahler, at the Royal Academy of Music. He returned to the Academy in 2023 as Head of Vocal Faculty and Preparatory Opera, and became Head of Opera in 2024.
Christopher’s international operatic career has included engagements with The Royal Opera, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opernhaus Zürich and Israeli Opera. Festival work includes Bayreuth (2016-17) on the Ring and Parsifal and the Salzburg Festival with Strauss operas (from 2018).
From 2016 to 2023 he served as Head of Music at Deutsche Oper Berlin, overseeing musical preparation of all operas at one of Europe’s busiest and most prestigious houses, including the complete stage works of Richard Wagner, and operas by Mozart, Strauss and Puccini alongside multiple world premieres. He has worked with the foremost opera conductors in the world including Edward Gardner, Jakub Hrůša, Marek Janowski, Vladimir Jurowski, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Donald Runnicles and Franz Welser-Möst.
Concert 2: “Postcard from Vienna”
Scintilla Quartet (Royal Academy of Music, London)
Christopher White – Piano
Formed in 2024, the Scintilla Quartet are an exciting young ensemble studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London. They regularly receive coachings from a plethora of world class musicians, including Anthony Marwood, Sini Simonen, and members of the Doric, Fibonacci and Barbican Quartets. They are current beneficiaries of the Frost ASSET Scheme and have worked closely with their mentor Hélène Clement over the year. The ensemble looks forward to their debuts at the Petworth Festival and the Tetbury Goods Shed Series, a Chamber Studios residency with Donald Grant and Marie Bitlloch, and further study days with Alasdair Tait and the Doric String Quartet.
Some of their notable performances include public masterclasses with Thomas Adès in 2026 and Lawrence Power in 2025, and more recently a lunchtime recital at Lea Barn for the Maidenhead Music Society’s Rising Stars concert and at St James’ Piccadilly for their chamber music series. They won 2nd prize in the Historical Women Composers Prize and in the Nina Drucker Haydn Prize within the Academy in the past year and were guest artists at the 2025 iteration of the Halstead Music Festival.
Concert 3: “English Organ Classics”
David Dunnett – Organist Emeritus, Norwich Cathedral
David Dunnett was organ scholar of Clare College, Cambridge, and also studied at the Royal Academy of Music – his organ teachers included John Pryer and David Sanger. After work in Ohio, USA, he returned to England to teach music at Uppingham School and was subsequently sub-organist at Winchester Cathedral from 1991 to 1996. He became organist at Norwich Cathedral in 1996 and was also Master of the Music from 1996 to 2007.
He has played the organ extensively in Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Brazil, the USA and Australia, and features on numerous recordings as a conductor, soloist and accompanist.
As well as duties at the cathedral in Norwich he is the choral conductor of the Norwich Philharmonic Society and is a former part-time lecturer at the University of East Anglia. He also regularly works as an accompanist and is active as an examiner.
Concert 4: “A Celebration of the Voice”
Meeta Raval – Soprano
Deborah Humble – Mezzo Soprano
Anando Mukerjee – Tenor
Simon Wallfisch – Baritone
Christopher White – Piano
British-Indian soprano Meeta Raval is one of the leading Spinto sopranos of her generation and is the only Spinto soprano of Indian origin in the world. She is acclaimed for her emotionally profound portrayals of women in the operas of Puccini, Verdi, and the verismo repertoire.
Born and raised in Staffordshire, England, Meeta has enjoyed an extensive 25-year career in opera, performing internationally with conductors and directors including the late Sir Colin Davis, Marco Armiliato, Carlo Rizzi, John Copley, Christof Loy, and Sir David Pountney.
Meeta represented England in the final of the 2011 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, is the winner of the Pavarotti Prize, and has been supported at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, by the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.
Educated at Wells Cathedral School, Meeta was one of the first cathedral girl choristers in the history of the United Kingdom. She went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the National Opera Studio. Since graduating, she has performed in television, radio, opera, and concert venues internationally.
Welsh/Australian mezzo-soprano Deborah Humble is noted for her operatic and concert performances worldwide. The recipient of three Greenroom Award nominations, she has sung more than 70 operatic roles.
A former principal artist with both Opera Australia and the Hamburg State Opera, Humble was a recipient of the AOAC Joan Sutherland Award in 2004 and a finalist at the International Wagner Competition in Seattle in 2008.
Recordings include Erda in Das Rheingold and Siegfried (Naxos, Hong Kong Philharmonic conducted by Jaap van Zweden) Erda, First Norn and Schwertleite (Oehms, Hamburg State Opera conducted by Simone Young), Clarissa in The Love For Three Oranges (Chandos, Opera Australia conducted by Sir Richard Hickox), Marvellous Mezzo-sopranos and Contraltos (Naxos) and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 conducted by Simone Young, released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2025.
Recent opera engagements for Opera Australia include La Cieca in La Gioconda alongside Jonas Kaufmann conducted by Pinchas Steinberg and Waltraute and Fricka for three Ring Cycles in Brisbane conducted by Philippe Augin. She sang Erda and Waltruate in three Ring Cycles for Melbourne Opera conducted by Anthony Negus, and made two further role debuts with the company as Magdalena in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Dalila in Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila. For Victorian Opera she made two Strauss role debuts as Clairon in Capriccio and Klytamnestra in Elektra. This year this year she makes two significant role debuts in the UK; Herodias in Strauss’s Salome and Madame de Croissey in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites.
Recent performances on the concert platform are include Waldtaube in Schonberg’s Gurrelieder, Waltraute in Wagner’s Die Walküre and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simone Young, Mahler’s 8th Symphony with the Western Australian Symphony conducted by Asher Fisch, Verdi’s Requiem with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Umberto Clerici, Mahler’s 3rd Symphony with the Auckland Philharmonia conducted by Giordano Bellincampi and Mozart’s Requiem with the London Chorus at Cadogan Hall.
Further performances in 2026 include Verdi’s Requiem with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Waltraute in Die Götterdämmerung for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a solo recital for the Elder Hall Recital Series in Adelaide and Les Nuits d’été by Berlioz with the newly formed Fernleigh Orchestra in Newcastle.
Deborah has been included in the Who’s Who of Australian Women since 2009 and is Patron of both the Wagner Society of South Australia and the Newcastle Music Festival. She is a Music Board member for the Tait Memorial Trust in London and a Mentor for the Dame Nellie Melba Young Artists’ Programme.
Anando Mukerjee is “India’s finest tenor” (The Statesman, 2009) and enjoys an international career. He studied singing privately in the UK after reading Natural Sciences at Cambridge University (as an Inlaks Scholar) and with the legendary Nicolai Gedda, one of the 20th
Century’s greatest tenors. An Italianate spinto tenor specializing in Bel-canto, Romantic and Verismo Italian and French opera and most recently the Wagnerian heldentenor repertoire, he has a large and diverse concert repertoire encompassing oratorio and art-song in seven languages from the Baroque to the Modern eras.
Anando has appeared at the Kennedy Center, Royal Opera House (Crush Room), Scottish Opera, Belgrade National Opera, the National
Centre for the Performing Arts (Bombay), Cadogan Hall & Wigmore Hall. He was a finalist in the 2012 Wagner Society Bayreuth Bursary Competition and has been regularly featured on the BBC (World Service & Radio 3 In-Tune), Premier Christian Radio & All-India Radio. He trained for ordination in the Church of England at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University as is currently Curate at St. James’ Muswell Hill, London specializing in evangelism, apologetics & music worship
ministry.
Born in 1982 in London into a musical family. He went on to study cello and voice at the Royal College of Music London, gaining a bachelors in 2004 and post graduate diploma in voice 2006. He went on to study under a DAAD scholarship at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Hochschule für Musik und Theater where he gained Diplom in Voice in 2009. He was subsequently engaged at the International Opera Studio of the Zurich Opera House until 2011.
Simon performed solo recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, Leeds Lieder Festival and Oxford Lieder Festival. He has appeared as concert soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra broadcast on BBC Radio, Poznan Filharmonia, Wroclaw Filharmonic in Jonathan Dove’s ‘In Exile’. He has also sung as soloist with the Zurich Kammer Orchester, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, English Chamber Orchestra and many others.
In opera, Simon has performed as soloist at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Staatsoper Nürnberg, English Touring Opera, Nationale Reisopera Nederlands, Landestheater Fürth, Landestheater Altenburg-Gera, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Komische Oper Berlin.
He is amassing a steady output of recordings, including Songs by Geoffrey Bush (Lyrita 2015), Songs by Caplet, Honegger, Milhaud and Ravel (Nimbus 2017), Gesänge des Orients (Ullmann, Haas, Strauss, Wellesz (Nimbus 2018), Songs by Thea Musgrave (Lyrita 2019), Songs by Robin Holloway (Delphian 2019) Schumann Lieder (Resonus 2019), Brahms Lieder (Resonus 2020) and Kowalski Lieder (Nimbus 2023).
He is passionate about repertoire by composers whose lives were affected or cut short by the Holocaust. Himself coming from a family of survivors, Simon has been invited regularly to perform, adjudicate and give masterclasses at the International Festival of Verfemte Musik in the Hochschule Rostock, as well as running educational courses at Aldeburgh Young Musicians, and Brundibar Arts Festival in the UK. In 2021 he curated and performed a programme with the BBC Singers at London’s Barbican Centre. Simon has curated and performed many concerts focussing on works written in the Ghetto Terezin between 1941-1944, most recently at London’s Wigmore Hall and Germany’s International Jewish Culture festival. He continues to champion works by composers who until today continue to remain in the long shadow cast by the horrors of National Socialism.
Passionate about education, Simon has taught at the Royal College of Music London, Royal Conservatoire, Birmingham, the London College of Music, University of West London, Osnabrück Hochschule für Musik where he was the artistic director of the summer school in 2018. He is currently also employed at the Komische Oper Berlin as Chorus-Soloist.
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/halstead-music-festival-2025
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