Each year the Sam Hutching Pianist Prize is awarded to an outstanding accompanist to work with Malcolm Martineau and alongside our experienced staff, playing for classes and rehearsals as required.
2025 recipient of the prize to be announced shortly.
2024 recipient of the prize:
Francesca Lauri is currently studying a masters in Collaborative Piano with Simon Lepper, Kathron Sturrock and Roger Vignoles at the Royal College of Music and is the recipient of the Ian Evans Lombe Scholarship. She is a 2023 Leeds Lieder, Samling and Shipston Song Young Artist and holds a scholarship from the Countess of Munster trust for her studies at RCM this year. In 2022, she graduated from Trinity Laban with a First-Class Honours degree receiving the TCL Silver Medal for piano studies and winning the David Gosling Prize for Piano Accompaniment. Francesca has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Milton Court, the Fazioli Concert Hall, LSO St. Luke’s and Teatru Manoel in Malta. She has won the piano prizes in both the RCM Lieder and Lies Askonas competitions and is also the winner of the piano prizes in the 2022 Somerset Song Prize and the 2023 AESS Dorothy Richardson English Song Prize. In recent years, Francesca has participated in masterclasses with Susan Manoff, Veronique Gens, Dame Sarah Connolly, Kate Royal, Nikky Spence, Anne Sofìe von Otter and Sir Thomas Allen.
Previous recipients of the prize:
2023 Eunji Han
2022 Matthew Gibson
2021 Course cancelled due to pandemic
2020 Course cancelled due to pandemic
2019 Marina Staneva/Kunal Lahiry (joint)
2018 Ewan Gilford
2017 Keval Shah
2016 Natalie Burch/Conal Bembridge-Sayers (joint)
2015 John Cuthbert
2014 Dearbhla Collins
2013 Chris Harding/Geoffrey Tanti (joint)
