Biography
Joseph Tong maintains a broad pianistic profile that encompasses solo recitals, duo partnerships, and chamber-music collaborations, while also earning recognition as an instructor. Raised in Somerset, he began his training at Wells Cathedral School under Hilary Coates. His sibling Daniel, likewise a concert pianist, has joined him for performances of two-piano repertoire. After completing music studies at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he received his degree in 1993, Tong continued at the Royal College of Music with Christopher Elton, obtaining a DipRAM in 1995; he later took private instruction from Piers Lane. The 1996 Maisie Lewis Young Artists Award led to his Wigmore Hall recital debut the next year.
Alongside his brother, Tong has sustained a long-running partnership with Waka Hasegawa in the duo Piano 4 Hands, appearing frequently throughout Britain at Wigmore Hall, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, St George’s Bristol, and at festivals including those in Buxton, York, and Cheltenham on three occasions. Their first commercial recording, Schubert: Piano Duets, appeared on the Quartz label in 2009. As a soloist Tong has concentrated on the music of Sibelius and Schumann, presenting these composers at Ainola on the composer’s own Steinway and in Schumann’s native cities of Zwickau and Leipzig. Both alone and with Hasegawa he has promoted new music, commissioning pieces for two pianos from Dai Fujikura, John McCabe—whose solo work Upon Entering a Painting he recorded in 2011—and Edwin Roxburgh. In 2008 he established the Bristol International Piano Duo Festival and remained its co-director until 2017. A set of new solo pieces by David Matthews was scheduled for premiere by Tong at the Three Choirs Festival in summer 2022.
His complete Sibelius piano music was issued by Quartz in two volumes (2015 and 2017), followed by a Schumann anthology on the same label in 2019. In 2022 Tong joined Resonus Classics to record Sibelius works for violin and piano with Fenella Humphreys. He holds the position of senior piano tutor at Wells Cathedral School.
Alongside his brother, Tong has sustained a long-running partnership with Waka Hasegawa in the duo Piano 4 Hands, appearing frequently throughout Britain at Wigmore Hall, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, St George’s Bristol, and at festivals including those in Buxton, York, and Cheltenham on three occasions. Their first commercial recording, Schubert: Piano Duets, appeared on the Quartz label in 2009. As a soloist Tong has concentrated on the music of Sibelius and Schumann, presenting these composers at Ainola on the composer’s own Steinway and in Schumann’s native cities of Zwickau and Leipzig. Both alone and with Hasegawa he has promoted new music, commissioning pieces for two pianos from Dai Fujikura, John McCabe—whose solo work Upon Entering a Painting he recorded in 2011—and Edwin Roxburgh. In 2008 he established the Bristol International Piano Duo Festival and remained its co-director until 2017. A set of new solo pieces by David Matthews was scheduled for premiere by Tong at the Three Choirs Festival in summer 2022.
His complete Sibelius piano music was issued by Quartz in two volumes (2015 and 2017), followed by a Schumann anthology on the same label in 2019. In 2022 Tong joined Resonus Classics to record Sibelius works for violin and piano with Fenella Humphreys. He holds the position of senior piano tutor at Wells Cathedral School.
Albums
Sibelius: Works for Violin & Piano
2022
R. Schumann: Works for Piano
2019
Sibelius: Piano Works, Vol. 2
2017
Sibelius Piano Works Vol. 1
2015
Sibelius: Piano Works, Vol. 1
2015
Schubert: Piano Duets
2009
Debussy: Piano 4 Hands
2006
Singles
