Biography

Charles Wiffen

Charles Wiffen is Head of Academic Portfolio at Bath Spa University and between 2015 and 2018 was Visiting Professor at Shanghai University. He previously lectured at the Royal College of Music where he was Grove Research Fellow from 1998 to 2004. He has also taught at Trinity Laban in London, and regularly performs and gives masterclasses at Dartington International Summer School and at Curso Internacional de Musica Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain.

Charles Wiffen has performed extensively throughout the UK, as well as further afield in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, the USA, Israel, China, Taiwan, Japan and Africa. He has given recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room, and in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, and his festival appearances have included the Arundel, Brighton, Bath, BBC Proms, Buckingham, Chelsea and Warwick Festivals. He has also performed in the Park Lane Group series in London and was selected by the late Isaac Stern to perform in ‘Jerusalem Encounters’. Charles has broadcast for BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM and has recorded several CDs for labels including Toccata Classics.

Charles studied at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and at the Royal College of Music in London. He studied with Yonty Solomon, Emanuel Ax, Boris Berman, Yefim Bronfman, and Steven de Groote.

Charles’s solo repertoire includes works from the Austro-German tradition, as well as much Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and Ravel. He has a particular interest in transcriptions and arrangements and includes examples by Busoni, Godowsky, Grainger, Wild, Stevenson, Sciarrino and Finnissy in his programmes. Charles also performs a wide range of contemporary music, by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Judith Weir, Julian Anderson, Kenneth Hesketh and Richard Causton.