Biography
Martin James Bartlett possesses a fearless technique and plays with a maturity and elegance far beyond his years. In 2022, he became the inaugural recipient of the Prix Serdang, a Swiss award curated by Rudolf Buchbinder to recognise a young pianist forging an international solo career. An exclusive recording artist with Warner Classics, Bartlett has earned consistent critical acclaim, with his albums receiving five-star reviews and top accolades. Praised by The Arts Desk for his performance as “frankly like watching another, superior, species,” Bartlett continues to affirm his place as one of the most compelling pianists of his generation.
The 2026/27 season sees Bartlett perform across the UK and Europe. He opens the season with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, later on returning to the London Mozart Players for Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto. Highlights include performances of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in Tallinn as part of the orchestra’s Piano Festival, and with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg. Following the release of his acclaimed recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, Bartlett gives further performances of the work in Switzerland and Romania. His recital schedule includes appearances in London, Norwich, Beverley, Canterbury and Stuttgart, alongside return engagements in Vienna and at Villa Serdang.
Recent highlights include debuts at the Lucerne and Moritzburg Festivals, a return to the Concertgebouw, and a two-week U.S. tour with solo engagements in Cincinnati and San Francisco. As a concerto soloist, Bartlett has toured the UK with Sinfonia of London under John Wilson, and across Europe with the LGT Young Soloists, performing Philip Glass’s Tirol Piano Concerto at major venues including the Berlin Konzerthaus and Vienna Musikverein. The tour culminated in a gala performance for the Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein in London.
He has given recitals at leading venues including the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Salle Cortot in Paris, and appeared at festivals including La Roque d’Anthéron, Grafenegg, Rheingau, Dresden, and the International Chopin Piano Festival. His US recital debut in 2022, presented by the Young Concert Artists Series, included performances in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
An exclusive artist with Warner Classics, Bartlett has released a series of acclaimed albums on the label. His most recent release featuring concertos by Bach, Mozart and Britten, follows La Danse (2024), featuring French baroque and impressionist repertoire, which received five stars in The Times and was named Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Rhapsody (2022), recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Joshua Weilerstein, pairs Rachmaninoff and Gershwin and received similar accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. His debut, Love and Death (2019), was praised in The Times, The Guardian, and The Sunday Times.
Bartlett rose to prominence in 2014 as winner of BBC Young Musician of the Year, making his BBC Proms debut the following season with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He has since performed with all the BBC orchestras and at major national events including the National Service of Thanksgiving for HM Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday, broadcast live from St Paul’s Cathedral.
He studied at the Royal College of Music with Professor Vanessa Latarche, graduating with top honours and later receiving the Queen Mother Rosebowl from HRH The Prince of Wales. From 2020–2022 he held the RCM Benjamin Britten Piano Fellowship, during which time he made his play/direct conducting debut with the London Mozart Players. He now serves on the RCM faculty as Professor of Piano.
Other accolades include First Prize at the 2019 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York, Second Prize and the Audience Award at the Kissingen Piano Olympiad (2018) and victory at the 2020 global Virtu(al)oso competition hosted by Piano Cleveland.
Projects
A curatorial approach to recording
As an exclusive Warner Classics artist, Bartlett builds each album around a single idea rather than a standard recital programme — from the love-and-death arc of his debut Love and Death (2019), through Rhapsody (2022), which threads a jazz and blues sensibility through Rachmaninov and Gershwin, to La Danse (2024), a journey through French dance music from the Baroque to Ravel. The albums have drawn five-star reviews and Gramophone Editor’s Choice awards.
Directing from the keyboard
Bartlett also directs orchestras from the piano, an eighteenth-century practice he has revived in his own music-making; he made his play-direct debut with the London Mozart Players in 2022.
News
Media
Press
Recording: Concertos (Warner Classics)All told, this is an exceptional recording…
International Piano, summer 2026
Recording: Concertos (Warner Classics)here we have a captivating artist whose impassioned style grows stronger with each passing year.
BBC Music Magazine, 5 stars, March 2026
Wigmore Hall recital with Mariam BatsashviliPerfectly at one in matching tone and response, this phenomenal duo who are both formidable solo personalities in their own right also took us through a range of colours and approaches in a cornucopia of masterpieces… simply phenomenal.
The Arts Desk, February 2026
Shostakovich / Bournemouth Symphony OrchestraThis performance [Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1] produced the evening’s best music-making, thanks largely to the young soloist Martin James Bartlett… The wild satire, mock-Lisztian heroics and sudden swerves into melting lyricism of the 27-year-old Shostakovich found their ideal executant in the 28-year-old Bartlett, who has just the right volcanic temperament and exuberant virtuosity to bring those qualities to life.
The Telegraph, Oct 2024
Mozart / London Philharmonic Orchestra with Anja BihlmaierHere his warm expressiveness, paired with astonishing articulacy brought out all the light and shade in a concerto that was rapturously received from its first performance in 1785. […] There was an engaging elasticity to his style – from the way his body curved towards the piano to the free almost improvisational style he brought to the tricky arpeggiated passages. […] [W]atching him scale its technical challenges with superlative ease while bringing out its full emotional complexity was frankly like watching another, superior, species.
Arts Desk, 4*, January 2024
Recording: La Danse (Warner Classics, 2024)Bartlett is a highly expressive musician […] his Couperin flickers with a cosy firelight warmth. His two Hahn miniatures are deliciously bittersweet and whirlingly joyful, while Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1 slips by like liquid sunshine.
BBC Music Magazine
Rachmaninov / National Symphony Orchestra with Joshua WeilersteinI’d expected wit and charm from live-wire Bartlett, but perhaps not the depth and menace…He gave space when needed in miraculous rubato, with Weilerstein always watchful, and caught exactly the introspection and release necessary in the famous 18th variation. The drive through the finale was hair-raising, something you had to hear live to believe. Here was all the subtle artistry and emotion I can never hear too often from the spontaneous-seeming Bartlett.
Arts Desk, 5*, May 2023
Gershwin / UK tour with the Sinfonia of London and John WilsonBarlett combines flawless technique with such infectious enthusiasm and ebullient musical wit that it was hard not to leave one’s seat and start dancing in the aisles. In his hands the solo part had all the fantasy you could wish for, without being tipped into idiosyncrasy
ReviewsGate, 5 stars, December 2022
Recording: Rhapsody (Warner Classics)It’s a joyful display, full of warmth, character and the singing tone that Bartlett has come to be known for… The emphasis is on spontaneity rather than virtuosity for its own sake, with an elastic rapport between orchestra and soloist…great stuff.
BBC Music Magazine, 5 stars, April 2022
Recording: Love and Death (Warner Classics)Love and Death (Warner) is his first recital disc: ambitious repertoire. Thoughtfully and eloquently played, of subtly interlinking works by Liszt, Granados, Prokofiev and Bach (arranged by Busoni and Hess)… A striking debut.
The Guardian, July 2019
Ravel Piano Concerto in G major / Philharmonia Orchestra / Royal Festival HallMartin James Bartlett’s artful, pristine reading of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G illustrated how thrilling one composer’s use of another’s musical argot can be. No wonder Ravel declined to teach Gershwin. Why bother when he could take Gershwin’s material and transform it into something so delightfully sheer, seductive and soignée?
The Times, May 2019
Ravel Piano Concerto in G major / Philharmonia Orchestra / Royal Festival HallRavel’s G-major Piano Concerto was then given a highly characterful outing, its bluesy playfulness and dreamy introspection underlined by the Philharmonia and Martin James Bartlett. The transparency of his playing impressed, passagework clean and bright-toned and dreamy languor beautifully nuanced. Bartlett’s delicacy of touch served the Adagio well, beguiling woodwind contributions floating above sparkling piano figuration with the climax smoothly integrated into a shapely span. The Presto Finale was like a runaway train, very exciting, and arriving at the buffers in one piece.
The Classical Source, May 2019
Recording: Love and Death (Warner Classics)The 2014 BBC Young Musician of the Year’s debut disc is an intriguing, exquisitely played sequence ingeniously probing the eternal verities of the title.
The Sunday Times, May 2019
Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Scriabin / Duszniki International Chopin Piano FestivalThis was without doubt one of the most extraordinary recitals ever to have taken place in the Dworek… Here we have a complete musician and pianist that is almost faultless surely… His touch and tone were so elegant and refined with extraordinary nuance and colour… The Rondeau and Capriccio replete with subtle and elegant energy, understated yet magnificently polyphonic. Magical Bach….This young pianist is a true musical and pianistic discovery at a remarkable level of sophisticated musicianship scarcely ever achieved in youth. Just watch this meteor rise…
Michael Moran, August 2018
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.491 / Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra cond. Sir Bernard Haitink[Martin James Bartlett] is a Mozart natural, possessed of a thoroughly grounded craft that reminds of the young Perahia and which makes Mozart seem so easy. He shapes phrases with unfussy directness, gives the passagework a wonderful glow and muscularity, is scrupulously easy on the pedal and is up for any amount of banter with the orchestra, in the process encouraging some equally idiomatic playing from the RCM’s accomplished woodwinds. The thing that impressed me most, however, was Bartlett’s command of Mozart’s mercurial changes of tack in this complex work – the shadows of anxiety in the Larghetto were elegantly fielded between soloist and orchestra, and he juggled the frowning-face/smiley-face repartee in the Finale with a wisdom and wit beyond his years
Classical Source, February 2018
Van Cliburn International Piano CompetitionThese two Scarlatti sonatas, like most of his others, are short but require great clarity and precise fingers and Bartlett has both attributes… When he is playing, he is so at ease that he could be in his own living room with no one listening.
TheatreJones, May 2017
Recital in NiceMartin James Bartlett is not only a prodigy of the piano but an accomplished artist who counts among the greats of his generation.
Nice Matin, February 2017
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Eric Whitacre / BBC PromsGershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue gave us the Proms debut of last year’s BBC Young Musician: joining the Royal Philharmonic, the pianist Martin James Bartlett brought maximum feeling to the music and played with astonishing delicacy and punch.
Daily Telegraph, August 2015
Discography
Contact
Management
Imogen Morris
Founder & Director, Morris Artists
imogen@morris-artists.com
+44 (0) 7810 800016