Stott, Kathryn (Linda)

Stott, Kathryn (Linda), remarkable English pianist; b. Nelson, Lancashire, Dec. 10, 1958. She was a student of Perlemuter and Boulanger at the Yehudi Menuhin School of Music in Stoke d’Abernon, and then of Kendall Taylor at the Royal Coll. of Music in London. In 1978 she won a prize at the Leeds Competition and made her debut at the Purcell Room in London. She then was engaged as a soloist with the principal British orchs. and with orchs. abroad, and also appeared as a recitalist and chamber music player in England and beyond. In 1995 she was artistic director of a Fauré festival in Manchester, the success of which led the French government to name her a Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres that same year. Her collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma in a recording of works by Piazzolla in 1997 won a Grammy Award. That same year, she was soloist in the premiere of Maxwell Davies’s Piano Concerto with the Royal Phil, of London. In 1998 she was artistic director of the “Out of the Shadows” festival in Liverpool, where she showcased the music of Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, and where she appeared as soloist in the rarely performed Piano Concerto of the latter composer with the Royal Liverpool Phil. She was artistic director in 2000 of the “Piano 2000” festival in Manchester in which several modern works were highlighted. While Stott has not neglected works from the standard repertoire, she has done much to extend the repertoire to include neglected composers and contemporary scores. Her discerning and idiomatic recording of the complete solo piano music of Fauré is a notable example of her keyboard artistry, while her performances of such modern composers as John Adams, James Macmillan, Paul Schoenfield, and Marc Yeats have secured her reputation as a committed proponent of the music of her own era.

—Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire