Ana BeatriZ FERREIRA

Born on a scorching August afternoon in the beautiful region of Alentejo, in southern Portugal, Ana Beatriz does not remember a life without music. Ana Beatriz, the daughter of two classical music lovers, was drawn to the piano early, starting formal lessons at seven. At eight years old, a fascination with the “Emperor” Piano Concerto turned Ludwig van Beethoven into her favourite composer. Years later, in her adolescent years and while studying at the National Conservatoire in Lisbon, where she finished her final piano exam with full marks, Russian music became her particular interest.

Today, Ana Beatriz is an engaged recitalist, chamber musician and soloist. Her career has led her to perform in several venues in Portugal, the UK and Canada.

Her most important project to date has been her work on the Piano Concerto by Portuguese composer Joly Braga Santos; she organised and performed the Concerto’s UK premiere in London in 2015 with the In Tune Orchestra conducted by Pablo Urbina, virtually bringing the work to life. Performing this work prompted her to start a PhD in Piano Performance on the Concerto at Cardiff University, where she was awarded a full scholarship. She recently concluded her doctoral degree and is now an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Since 2015, Ana Beatriz has performed the Joly Braga Santos Piano Concerto at St. David’s Hall in Cardiff, Wales, with the Cardiff University Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Eager, and on tour in Portugal with the Portuguese Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Osvaldo Ferreira. Other concerts with orchestras and ensembles have included performances with the Filarmonia das Beiras Orchestra, Maia Chamber Orchestra, Cardiff University String Orchestra and the Cardiff Contemporary Music Group.

Ana Beatriz holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music and a Master’s Degree in Performance from the Royal College of Music in London, having studied with Ruth Nye MBE – one of Claudio Arrau’s rare disciples – Gordon Fergus-Thompson and Dina Parakhina. She was generously sponsored by Grupo Jerónimo Martins, Amigos de Música de S. Lourenço and Mundo Crastino Meliori Foundation for her studies.

Participation in piano masterclasses has allowed Ana Beatriz to learn from pianists Luiz de Moura Castro, Paul Badura-Skoda, Vitaly Margulis, Boris Berman, Dmitri Alexeev, Enrico Pace, Ingrid Fliter and Boris Petruchansky.

Alongside her performing career, Ana Beatriz is a piano tutor at the Junior Conservatoire of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She has also recently become an Associate Lecturer at Cardiff University, where she teaches piano to undergraduate and master’s students and is in charge of the module “Piano Collaboration”. She has also taught masterclasses in Portugal, the UK, and most recently in Thailand for the Department of Music of Silpakorn University in Bangkok.

Future projects include the launch of a CD containing the complete solo piano works by Joly Braga Santos and the complete works for violin and piano of the same composer, in collaboration with the violinist Lana Trotovšek.