An award-winning pianist and versatile chamber musician, Irena Radić is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Music, London, where she studied with Niel Immelman and Dina Parakhina as a Cotes-Burgan Scholar. She completed her Master of Performance degree with distinction in 2020, and holds a First Class Bachelor of Music (Honours) degree (2018). Prior to that she attended the RCM’s Junior Department where she studied with Lynette Stulting, supported by the Tsukanov Family Foundation, the Wolfson Foundation and the Else and Leonard Cross Charitable Trust. As a recipient of the John Mortimer Award, Irena was selected as a Philharmonia MMSF Piano Fellow 2018-19, and was a Help Musicians UK Postgraduate Award Holder 2018. She is also grateful to have received support from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Hilda Martindale Educational Trust and the St Marylebone Educational Foundation.
Irena was a prize winner in the Bromsgrove International Musicians Competition (2018), the RCM’s Kendall Taylor Beethoven Competition (2018) and at two international music festivals: Verão Classico Masterclasses (2017) (Portugal) and Alion Baltic International Music Festival (2017) (Estonia). Other awards include the Teresa Carreño Piano Prize (2014), Young Musician of the Year (2013) at both Peterborough and Oundle Music Festivals, the Head of Junior Programmes Prize (2013), and the May Edwards Memorial Prize at the Gordon Turner Memorial Competition (2013). She was also chosen to perform at the Wigmore Hall as a prizewinner in the Jaques Samuel Junior Department Piano Festival (2012 & 2013). Irena has performed in venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, The Forge, Bolivar Hall, Routh Hall and West Road Concert Hall. She has also performed in numerous public masterclasses with pianists including Bruno Canino, Charles Owen, Cristina Ortiz, Eldar Nebolsin, Jura Margulis, Mikhail Voskresensky and Norma Fisher.
Recent performances have featured a diverse range of major works including Rachmaninoff’s 10 Preludes Op.23, Britten’s song cycle Winter Words for tenor & piano, piano trios by Brahms, Shostakovich and Beethoven, Prokofiev’s Sonata for Flute & Piano, and sonatas for oboe & piano by Poulenc and Dutilleux. In celebration of Madeleine Dring’s centenary in 2023, Irena devised a series of programmes and performed numerous songs and oboe works by Dring with tenor Rory Carver and oboist Katherine Bryer. Other past projects have included a world premiere of Tantrum – a new work for Piano and Percussion by Nino Russell, and two performances of Bartok’s Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion. She has also worked extensively with musicians including Sirius Chau (flute), David López Ibañez (violin), Deni Teo (cello) and Martin James Bartlett (piano). She is a founding member of Duo Ravellion with Swedish guitarist Jonatan Bougt. Together they create new arrangements for their Guitar and Piano duo: their current programme includes Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye and Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes Op.34, which they have arranged with kind permission from Irina Shostakovich. In 2016 they won second prize at the Twents Guitar Festival in the Netherlands.
"Music festival secretary, Felicity Kamminga, described Irena’s talent as startling and her performance capable of creating an electric atmosphere."
-Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Alongside her career as a concert pianist, Irena is a dedicated and passionate teacher who has a wide range of students of all ages and abilities. When working with children her teaching is inspired by the Suzuki method, having studied with Jenny Macmillan from an early age. Irena teaches both privately and, since 2020, as a Visiting Music Teacher at St Catherine’s School in Bramley.
Irena also plays orchestral piano and celeste and has performed with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bernard Haitink, Diego Masson, Alexander Polishchuk, Peter Stark, Richard Dickins and Tim Lines in venues including Cadogan Hall, St John’s Smith Square and the Royal Festival Hall. Recent performances include works such as Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Ravel’s Daphnis & Chloé, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite, Shostakovich’s Symphonies nos. 1 & 5, Bernstein’s West Side Story – Symphonic Dances, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, Reich’s Three Movements for Orchestra and Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra.
