



Timothy Ridout
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“So fluent, so confident, so glad to be alive.”
The Times, 2025
Timothy Ridout’s 2025/26 season features appearances with many top international orchestras including BBC Symphony Orchestra/Hannu Lintu, Orchestre de Paris/Lorenza Borrani, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen/Ed Gardner, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest/Sir Mark Elder and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra/Donald Runnicles.
A popular soloist for many conductors Richard Egarr takes him to Residentie Orkest, Roberto Abbado to the Orchestra Filarmonica di Bologna, Mark Wigglesworth to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and Anthony Hermus to the Ulster Orchestra. In addition, he continues his close relationship with Sir Simon Rattle for Berlioz’ Harold in Italy on gut strings with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for concerts in London and Dublin.
Following the successful world premiere last season of Mark Simpson’s Viola Concerto Hold Your Heart in Your Teeth with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Robin Ticciati, Ridout brings the work to Royal Liverpool Philharmonic with Andrew Manze, Musikkollegium Winterthur with Alexandre Bloch and Philharmonie Zuidnederlands with Duncard Ward.
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A highly respected chamber musician, Ridout continues to present both solo and ensemble programmes across major venues and festivals. In summer 2025, he appeared at Verbier, Lanaudière, Salzburg, Rosendal, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Ryedale festival where he was Artist in Residence. This season, he plays around the UK with Federico Colli, with Leonkoros Quartet at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and with his regular quartet partners – Benjamin Grosvenor, Hyeyoon Park, Kian Soltani – at Vienna Musikverein.
In March 2026, he is Guest Artistic Director at Festspiele Frühling Mecklenburg Vorpommern presenting 17 programmes. He also continues his three-year residency at Junge Wilde in Dortmund and performs three different programmes at Wigmore Hall. In Asia, he plays at the very first edition of the Verbier Festival in Shenzhen, at Beare’s Premiere Music Festival in Hong Kong and at the NSO International Chamber Music Festival in Taipei. His other chamber partners include Janine Jansen, Frank Dupree, Isabelle Faust, Vilde Frang, Pablo Ferrández, Denis Kozhukhin and Klaus Mäkelä.
Recent orchestral highlights include concerts with Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Hamburger Symphoniker, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg and Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Across his engagements, he has worked with conductors such as Sakari Oramo, Jonathan Darlington, Martyn Brabbins, Riccardo Minasi, Sir András Schiff, Lionel Bringuier, Sylvain Cambreling, Nicholas Collon, David Zinman, and Kazuki Yamada.
Known for his wide-ranging discography, Ridout regularly records for Harmonia Mundi and his next album features 20th century French music with pianist Jonathan Ware and is coming out in May 2026.
In 2025, he won the Opus Klassik award in the ‘Young Instrumentalist of the Year’ category for his first solo viola album featuring works by Telemann, Bach, Britten and Shaw, and in 2024 he released an album which paid tribute to the great violist Lionel Tertis. Ridout also won a Gramophone Award for his recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, arranged for viola by Lionel Tertis, in the Concerto Category in 2023.
Previous recordings include works by Prokofiev, Schumann, Britten, Vaughan-Williams, Hindemith, Martinu and see Ridout collaborating with BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne as well as with pianists Frank Dupree and James Baillieu.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and Kronberg Academy, Ridout has earned accolades such as First Prize at both the Lionel Tertis and Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competitions. As well as being a former BBC New Generation Artist, he is also a recipient of the Borletti Buitoni Trust Fellowship and was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society 2023 Award for Young Artist. He was the inaugural recipient of Hamburger Symphoniker’s Sir Jeffrey Tate Prize and took part in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program.
Timothy Ridout performs on a 1565 – 75 viola by Peregrino di Zanetto, generously on loan from a patron of the Beare’s International Violin Society.
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“The technical challenges are formidable, especially in the third movement, but Ridout met them with ease.”
“Ridout’s taut, passionate playing drew out every note, yet his crying solo, as if from a distance, at the opening of the finale was achingly impressive”
“Ridout lavishes as much loving care upon Telemann’s miniatures as on J.S. Bach’s monumental violin masterpiece. Sticking mostly to low positions and with generous use of open strings, he brings out the music’s latent polyphony, while sprightly rhythms and a keen ear for embellishments underline its omnipresent dance-like character.”
“Ridout is a truly extraordinary soloist, extracting a glorious sound from a 1575 viola built by Peregrino di Zanetto, with which he literally merges.”
“So fluent, so confident, so glad to be alive”
“A skilled and thoughtful player, he artfully captures the myriad colours and moods of this once-misunderstood instrument.”
“A lovingly curated tribute to one of the past’s finest viola players, Lionel Tertis, from one of today’s, Timothy Ridout: a generously filled album of glorious music.”
“Anyone who enjoys fine string playing shouldn’t hesitate to sample these performances.”
“This is a magisterial performance in anyone’s book.”
“As prodigious in Berlioz as in Elgar and Bloch […] amazing technical mastery, eloquence and lyricism […] The warmth, maturity and intense expressiveness are marvellous.”
“Ridout scores here with his brilliantly nimble fingerwork and precise note-separation. His slow movement is heartfelt, and the finale crackles with insightful, immaculately executed solo playing.”
“Ridout makes the scherzo fabulously nimble and precise, and the long aching lines of the Adagio even more plangent.”
“[Timothy Ridout] has a knack for playing almost unplayable scores with a disarming naturalness.”
“With just a few strokes of his bow, the British Timothy Ridout has made a place for himself in the very closed circle of great violists. His youthful brilliance […], his impatient assurance, and above all the natural authority of a style of playing that is both totally free and accomplished, kept the audience in the Salle Cortot, in Paris, in suspense”
“Undoubted star of the second half was violist Timothy Ridout, whose performance of Britten’s Lachrymae, mercurial yet autumnally intoxicating, was strengthened by prefacing it with Manze’s own arrangement of the Dowland song, “If my complaints could passions move”, on which the Britten is based.”
“The singers of the [Scottish Chamber Orchestra] Chorus got the tone just right, by turns rich, alluring or ardent; and Timothy Ridout’s viola surged in and out of the texture in a way that brought it to life without drawing attention to himself.”
“Timothy Ridout gave a performance of exceptional eloquence and maturity, and Downie Dear ensured that the players, both in their accompaniment and in the expansive orchestral sections, matched Ridout in sensitivity. The sheer beauty of it all was mesmerising and, by the end, profoundly moving.”
“Ridout’s transcription makes telling changes of register in the vocal line; this is supreme vindication of what musical imagination can do, even to works unfamiliar from their original formats.”
“In Tempo primo it was the viola’s turn. Timothy Ridout stood out with a deeply emotional and romantic sound. Perhaps this movement was the best of the concert. Delicate, romantic … ”
“I confess to having capitulated unconditionally to this heartfelt rendition of Schumann’s masterful song cycle on the viola. Ridout varies his sound astutely on repeated verses, bringing forth from his Peregrino Di Zanetto instrument myriad colours that bear testimony to his profound love of this music.”
“Timothy Ridout proved the ideal interpreter. Youthful and technically pitch perfect, he was also able to bring a sensitivity to his interpretation that emphasised a sense of fragility in the work that can sometimes be missed.”
A Poet’s Love (Harmonia Mundi)
“Ridout has made his own, highly effective arrangement of Schumann’s song cycle from 1840, Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love). At times he uses the viola’s flowing, higher register. Yet in a song such as Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome, with its grand aural depiction of Cologne Cathedral, he exploits the instrument’s baritonal qualities, always making the viola sing.”
A Poet’s Love (Harmonia Mundi)
“It is absolutely magnificent how Ridout’s viola transforms chameleon-like to fit the character of each number from Prokofiev’s ballet. It shows how confident he plays and how wide his color palette is… Detached from the text, one experiences Dichterliebe in a performance that is probably hard to beat for richness of nuance. And, believe me, one holds one’s breath again and again, so deeply emotional, so gripping is the performance. This fine work, this art of tasteful nuance and of communicating the depth of one’s own experience, results in a superior interpretation of Schumann’s music.”
“The irregular rhythms of Martinů’s Rhapsody-Concerto sound completely natural in Ridout’s hands as he alternates between unobstructive technical brilliance in the fast sections and a disarmingly gorgeous singing tone in the piece’s concluding moments.”
‘There was a persuasive sense of journeying towards a clear ‘end’: and, in the closing moments the frenetic alternation of arpeggiation and chordal outbursts cleared into a pizzicato conclusion of striking beauty and resonance.’
“The young violist Timothy Ridout plays four striking works with viola. In his the mid-twenties, he is already the recipient of many awards. It is therefore not surprising that he not only performs with a sophisticated technique, but presents a very personal interpretation.”
“You don’t even have to hear Timothy Ridout. You can see what he has to say with his instrument […]”
“[…] a performer whose touch could not be surer and whose musical instinct inspires confidence on every level, all conveyed through 24-carat dark-gold tone. Ridout won the Lionel Tertis Viola Competition a few years back and I think Tertis himself would be proud.“
“Violist Timothy Ridout shines with virtuosity.”
“Master virtuoso.”
“Top performances were in abundance… Amongst the standouts was Timothy Ridout’s transfixing rendition of Britten’s Lachrymae. Closing a concert intended as an elegy to Benjamin Britten on the very date of the composer’s 100th birthday, the young British violist soared to new heights in a rendition that brought many to tears, a virtual recreation of the Dowland text, ‘Flow my tears’.”
“I was strongly impressed by the gorgeous singing tone that Timothy Ridout produced. Furthermore, he was soulful and sensitive in his delivery of the music… I greatly admired Timothy Ridout’s performance of this great concerto [Walton]… He was able to deliver when virtuosity was required, but what will live longest in my memory was his wonderful response to the many ardently lyrical passages.”
“…Ridout tilting Walton’s final chord from minor to major in such an understated way that it became the most modest of triumphs.”
“This disc contains some of the best music written for the viola in the 19th Century… [Ridout] is a fine, young violist with a solid tone, perfect intonation, solid technique, and charisma. I look forward to hearing more from him.”
“A gorgeous tone, a thoughtful approach to phrasing and an infectious sense of impetuosity.”
“Ridout displays a consistently imaginative ear for tonal colours and an exciting variety of vibrato … clearly a talent to follow.”
“Timothy Ridout, with his technical perfection and beautifully warm and soft tone, perfectly matched the Romantic yearning [of Cecil Forsyth’s Viola Concerto in G minor].”