Piano Recital with Costas Fotopoulos

“So many superlatives come to mind to describe the playing of Costas Fotopoulos in the third Rachmaninov piano concerto: the effect was simply stunning…”  Robert Bailey, Bath Chronicle.  

“…accompaniments on the piano are still provided for silent classics at the National Film Theatre. And the champion at that is the young classical pianist-composer Costas Fotopoulos…” Michael Church, The Independent.  

Costas Fotopoulos is based in London and works internationally as a concert and silent film pianist, as well as a composer and arranger for film, the stage and the concert hall. He has given many solo and chamber performances in the UK as well as in Austria, Italy, Greece, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Nigeria. His acclaimed debut solo piano album was released in February 2009 under the JCL Records label, and features works by Rachmaninov as well as his own Toccata, which he has also recorded for YouTube and performed internationally. He has recorded repertoire for BBC Radio, as well as the piano solo work, Cross hands, for a CD of music by British composer Nicholas Sackman, released on the Metier label.   

Fotopoulos won a Scholarship Award at the International Johannes Brahms Competition 2012 and was a keyboard finalist in the 2001 Royal Over-Seas League Competition. He has also performed and recorded as a jazz pianist and keyboard player, and since July 2021 he has played Keyboard 1 in the West-End production of The Phantom of the Opera. He was also  Music Director of the hugely successful stage show, The Snowman, between 2018 and 2023, both in London and across the UK.  

Fotopoulos regularly provides live improvisations to silent films at BFI Southbank, which have included numerous films screened at the London Film Festival, and has accompanied silents at other major British venues such as the Barbican Centre and Prince Charles Cinema as well as in New York, Warsaw and northern Italy. In 2007 he provided a piano improvisation to sections of the Budget Speech, aired on BBC Radio 4.  

In 2002 he completed his master’s degree in Composition  for Screen at the Royal College of Music, passing with Distinction, and since then he has composed original music for British short films, most notably the award-winning animatic, Bedward Story (2015). January 2018 saw the release of Costas’ debut album for internationally renowned library music company, Audio Network: Fantastic Adventure. It is a seven-track album composed for full symphony orchestra and choir, and it was recorded at the world-famous Abbey Road Studio 1 by the English Session Orchestra – comprised top musicians from the UK’s leading orchestras – as well as London Voices whose list of credits includes the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films.   

Very successful performances have been given over the years of many of Fotopoulos’s concert works, the most recent being that of his orchestral piece, Sylvan Reflections, in February 2014. This was commissioned by Benenden School, Kent, to mark the 25th Anniversary of the Hemsted Forest Youth Orchestra, and it was inspired by the theme of the forest. His piano solo piece, Hommage à Chopin, was given its world premiere by the composer himself at Lampeter House, Wales, in August 2010. He gave further performances of this piece in major London venues, including the Hellenic Centre and Fairfield Halls, in October 2011.  

His St Paul’s for unaccompanied choir, a setting of words from the poem of the same name by William Wordsworth, was commissioned by the City of London School to be premiered by the School’s Chamber Choir in November 2009 at Guildhall, London, with a second recorded performance taking place at the School’s Autumn Concert during the same month. Other performances of Fotopoulos’s works include his Three Impressions (accordion/piano), premiered at St. Martin-in-the-Fields with further performances having taken place in Hanoi, Vietnam and again in London, his Elegiac Romance (cello/piano) at the Wigmore Hall, his Variations on La Seguedille (mezzo-soprano/cello/piano) at the Purcell Room and his Faith, Hope and Love Cantata (two sopranos/chamber orchestra) at St. Nicholas Church, Chiswick, where he was presented with the Serena Nevill Award. The latter two works were commissioned by the Concordia Foundation.  

For more information visit www.costasfotopoulos.com.