David Owen Norris is a pianist, composer and broadcaster. He won the Prize of the City of Geneva in the Geneva Competition, and the Accompanist’s Prize at Leeds; and since his appointment to the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award, has performed all across the world, with many appearances in the BBC Proms, concert tours of Europe, Australia and North America, including performances at Sydney Opera House, Kennedy Centre, Lincoln Centre, Ravinia Festival Chicago, South Bank Centre, Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and all the major Festivals, and a discography of over 60 commercial CDs including his own Piano Concerto with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and his oratorio Prayerbook. His other compositions include a Piano Sonata, Six Songs without Words, two song-cycles, a Symphony, the oratorio Turning Points, and the multi-media tribute to the passing seasons, HengeMusic. He composed and conducted the music for Radio 4’s programme Organ Symphony in 2025. In December 2025 his canticle A Christmas Carol was premiered at Wigmore Hall. Performances of his new completion of Elgar’s Piano Concerto are in the pipeline for 2026.
His Chord of the Week programmes on BBC2 television were a popular feature of the Proms for six years. His Perfect Pianists is often repeated on BBC4. He has contributed to programmes on Handel, Mendelssohn, Parry, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten & Tippett. His first TV presentation, The Real Thing? from 1990, was hailed by the Daily Telegraph as ‘the most literate and probing programme on music for many years’, and his most recent Chord of the Week was reviewed by the Observer as ‘the most consistently intelligent three minutes you’ll watch on this or any other television this year’. The Beethoven 9 app for which he wrote the book and the analyses won the Best Music App Award.
His many radio presentations have included the Playlist series on Radio 4, and In Tune and The Works on Radio 3, where he will make his 36th appearance on Building a Library in January comparing recordings of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. His recent recordings include Mozart on fortepiano for Hyperion, featured in the New York Times, the complete songs of Sir Arthur Sullivan for Chandos, and the complete Chamber Music of Grace Williams for Naxos, which was a Guardian CD of the Week. The Wellspring (Seren Books), a series of conversations with his son, the novelist and playwright Barney Norris, deals with cultural inheritance and the question of Englishness across a spectrum of different arts. Developed as a stage show at the request of Royal&Derngate, Northampton, it toured widely in 2022 to critical acclaim.
David Owen Norris was Artistic Director of the Cardiff International Festival and the Petworth Festival, and Chairman of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. He was Gresham Professor of Music in the City of London, and is now Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton, Visiting Professor at the Royal Northern College of Music, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, and of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He is an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford.