Richard Bannan – Baritone

Baritone Richard Bannan is a Lay-Clerk of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Musical Director of Petros Singers, and Head of Singing at King’s College School, Wimbledon alongside pursing a career as a soloist and consort singer. He began singing at an early age as a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral, before reading music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a Choral Scholar.

He has performed as soloist with orchestras such as Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort & Players, London Mozart Players and English Chamber Orchestra under conductors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Paul McCreesh, Richard Egarr, Nigel Short and David Bates, as well as with the single-voice ensembles Gallicantus, Tenebrae Consort and The Cardinall’s Musick.

Solo repertoire includes the Mozart, Brahms, Verdi, Fauré and Duruflé Requiems, the Bach Passions, both Bach and Saint-Saens’ Christmas Oratorios, Haydn Creation, Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony, Stanford Songs of the Fleet, Orff Carmina Burana and Ian Aserssohn’s new oratorio Dies Irae, in addition to mass settings by Mozart, Haydn, Rossini and Puccini as well as the Handel oratorios Messiah, Israel in Egypt and Dixit Dominus.

On stage he has sung Purcell’s Aeneas and Monteverdi’s Orfeo, whilst in recital he has sung cycles by Mahler (Kindertotenlieder) Brahms (Vier Ernste Gesänge), Vierne (Les Angelus), Cornelius (Weinachtslieder) and Finzi (I Said to Love) as well as shorter works by Beethoven, Schumann and Debussy.

As a conductor, with Woking Choral Society, Yateley Choral Society and Petros Singers he has directed most of the major Oratorio repertoire, often alongside The Garter Ensemble, an orchestra he founded in order to accompany amateur ensembles to a professional standard.

Recent solo performances include Mendelssohn’s Elijah at the Windsor International Festival, a gala performance of Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs in the presence of the Earl of Wessex and Bach’s St Matthew Passion in Worcester Cathedral.

Forthcoming engagements include the Durufle Requiem at Thaxted Festival, as well as conducting Petros Singers in Britten’s St Nicholas, alongside London Youth Choir, and Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers.

May 2025

www.richardbannan.co.uk

For Oratorio and Concert repertoire please scroll down: