REVIEWS
ADELAIDE FESTIVAL RESIDENCY, March 2026
"Violinist Anthony Marwood’s musicianship seemed to know no bounds in this year’s Adelaide Festival, especially when he teamed up with pianist Olly Mustonen in Elder Hall’s final all-Russian program.....
The violin steals most of the attention, and Marwood was dazzling in its [Beethoven Septet] ornate passagework and cadenza, which pops out at the end as if the piece has suddenly turned into a concerto.
Everything of course gets ramped up with Shostakovich. Following a delay caused by Elder Hall’s air-conditioning, his towering in his late-period Sonata for Violin and Piano in G major, Op. 134, received a most masterful performance, and one could amply see why it is often rated alongside the Eighth String Quartet as one of this composer’s most important chamber works.
Converging from their different respective aesthetic positions, Marwood and Mustonen gave it fullest unanimity and conviction. This sonata begins with bare octaves in the piano that sketch out a bleak landscape which is gradually filled with lonely murmurings from violin. This duo played with great deliberation, Marwood’s half whisper against the piano’s atonal octaves saying everything about this Soviet-era composition: it is filled with the deepest trepidation.
With increasing turmoil but resolute coolness, intensity reaches an almighty apex in its mighty second movement, and one could only marvel at these musicians’ perfectly seamless playing and mounting energy.
Hearing Shostakovich played with such deadly accuracy as Marwood and Mustonen delivered can sound unfamiliar, but here it was: a work that stares one in the face simultaneously with intimacy and brutality.
From half a century ago, this sonata’s strife-torn depiction of the world remains as true today as it did 56 years ago thanks to this epochal performance." INreview
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WIGMORE HALL RECITAL WITH JAMES CRABB, ACCORDION, 26th MAY 2025
"This electrifying recital, available on BBC Sounds, was given by James Crabb, the finest exponent of the accordion in the UK, and Anthony Marwood, a violinist who matches him in virtuosity, adventure and spirit. From the opening Piazzolla tangos to the final crazy swirl through a Scottish reel, I felt energised simply through proximity to these two master musicians. The wit of their interplay, the magic of the timbres they conjured, their vitality, their astonishing dexterity, but also the remarkable breadth of moods they summoned, from eerie whispers to devilish fierceness — all this clearly enthralled the audience."
***** THE TIMES, Richard Morrison
2021 TANGLEWOOD FESTIVAL, USA
“None could outshine special guest Anthony Marwood, the featured soloist in Ligeti’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Ending as it does with an extended and totally exposed cadenza — Marwood used one composed by Adès — this concerto demands Olympian-caliber endurance from its soloist, and Marwood surely would have run away with the gold. Under Adès’s baton, the orchestra created a backdrop of dramatic and organic sound; the Intermezzo saw the strings’ whispering tree-sounds morph into bright rocket flares, and the long Passacaglia slowly smoldered into a blazing inferno. Against all this, Marwood’s violin dug deep through double stops and soared high with angelic resonance — think many-eyed seraphim, not Precious Moments figurine. The orchestra’s closing gesture had scarcely dissipated before the fellows sharing my row were on their feet, cheering at full blast. They knew excellence when they heard it.”
BOSTON GLOBE July 2021
"Here’s a Walton Concerto with real bone and sinew. Anthony Marwood has the technique to encompass the dazzling fingerwork designed with Heifetz in mind, and his wiry vibrato and fat-free tone on the upper strings recall an older, less indulgent approach to music which isn’t all long Romantic lines and softly caressing orchestral colour. A red-carpet recording from Hyperion provides all the necessary depth and plushness of sound, while Marwood concentrates on the arresting melancholy of the opening Andante and the needle-point sardonic humour of the Scherzo. His success in tying together the variation episodes of the long finale draws it within the circle of similarly ambitious concerto structures by composers as disparate as Elgar, Berg and Shostakovich."
THE STRAD August 2017
“Is there nothing Anthony Marwood cannot do? He plays the violin, acts, dances, and can do all at once. He directs the Irish Chamber Orchestra, plays with the Florestan Piano Trio, commissions composers, jointly runs his own festival and has a network of worldwide collaborators. To cap it all, this consummate artist is blessed with boundless energy, intellectual curiosity and creative wizardry”
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
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“He’s a magic name in the business”
INDEPENDENT, UK
"Few musicians serve their metaphorical master as convincingly as British violinist Anthony Marwood. His every endeavour seems to stem from a debt to art, a debt to music. There is nothing that gets in the way of the ultimate goal - the realisation of perfection and honesty in his craft"
SUNDAY TRIBUNE, IRELAND
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"If there were rock-star equivalents in the classical music world, ace British violinist Anthony Marwood would be on the list"
THE AGE, AUSTRALIA