Whilst still a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Mhairi Lawson won the International Early Music Network Young Artists Prize with the fortepianist Olga Tverskaya, which led to her first CD recording of Haydn’s English and Scottish Songs.
Mhairi has performed in opera houses and concert halls worldwide with such companies as English National Opera, Les Arts Florissants, The Gabrieli Consort & Players, The Academy of Ancient Music, The Early Opera Company and The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and with many leading conductors such as William Christie, Sir Charles Mackerras, Paul McCreesh, Jane Glover and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, in repertoire ranging from traditional folksong to opera.
Recent and future highlights include performances of Galatea Acis and Galatea, Bach’s B minor mass and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and King Arthur with the Gabrieli Consort, Purcell Songes & Ayres and Handel’s Messiah with the Dunedin Consort, Bach’s St Matthew Passion with BBC NOW, Diane/Daphne in Charpentier’s Acteon with the Early Opera Copmany, Haydn’s Creation with the Arctic Philharmonic, regular residencies at the Carmel Bach Festival in the USA, and Mhairi continues her recital collaboration with Eugene Asti. Engagements that could sadly not take place in 2020 include Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
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Handel Brockes-Passion, Arcangelo, Alpha Classics
ALPHA644 (March 2021)
Mhairi Lawson’s shining soprano excels in her reflective arias towards the end of the work (the assuaging ‘Was Wunder, dass der Sonnen Pracht’, softly coloured by bassoons, is one of several foretastes of Acis and Galatea).
Gramophone
Purcell: Songs & Ayres, Dunedin Consort at the Lammermuir Festival
(September 2020)
Dunedin programmes are always inventive affairs, and this one showed not just a creative choice of repertoire, but joy taken in the variety of what was on offer, crowned by Mhairi Lawson’s shining soprano which gave the songs star quality that they probably didn’t have when they were first performed.
Simon Thompson, Seen and Heard International
Purcell King Arthur 1691, Gabrieli Consort & Players
Signum Classics SIGCD589 (October 2019)
Nine singers shared the songs and choruses between them, a flawless ensemble of equals, though Anna Dennis and Mhairi Lawson stood out as a seductive pair of sirens.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian*****
Purcell King Arthur, Gabrieli Consort & Players, St John’s Smith Square
(October 2019)
Overall, this is a cultivated performance, well sung and played …First-rate voices are onboard, including Anna Dennis, Mhairi Lawson…
Richard Fairman, The Financial Times****
Purcell King Arthur, Gabrieli Consort & Players, Auditorio Baluarte
Pamplona (October 2019)
The most important sopranos were Anna Dennis and Mhairi Lawson, who among other pages offered a delicious duet, in which the two shone in their own light.
José M. Irurzun, Beckmesser
It is important to mention the other three vocal soloists, the soprano Mhairi Lawson, the tenor Jeremy Budd and the bassist Robert Davies (replacing Marcus Farnsworth), who in all their solo interventions were singing at a high tessitura.
Enrique Bert, Platea Magazine
Mhairi Lawson’s Operatic Repertoire
| Albinoni | Il Nascimento dell’Aurora (Zeffiro) |
|---|---|
| Blow | Venus and Adonis |
| Cavalli | La Didone (Cassandra, Junone) |
| Charpentier | Actæon (Junone, Diane) |
| Handel | Agrippina (Nerone) |
| Hasse | Antonio e Cleopatra (Cleopatra) |
| Landi | Il Sant’Alessio (Curtio) |
| Menotti | The Consul (Anna Gomez) |
| Monteverdi | L'Orfeo (la Musica, Speranza, Proserpina) |
| Pergolesi | La serva padrona (Serpina) |
| Poulenc | Dialogues of the Carmelites (Madame Lidoine) |
| Puccini | Suor Angelica (Genevieve) |
| Purcell | Indian Queen (God of Dreams) |
| Scarlatti | La gloria di Primavera (Primavera) |
| Sullivan | Iolanthe (Phyllis) |
| Vivaldi | La fida ninfa (Morasto) |
| Weill | Threepenny Opera (Polly) |
Mhairi Lawson’s Concert Repertoire
| Bach | B minor Mass |
|---|---|
| CPE Bach | Magnificat |
| Brahms | Ein Deutsches Requiem |
| Dvorak | Stabat Mater |
| Fauré | Requiem |
| Handel | Messiah |
| Haydn | The Creation |
| Mendelssohn | Elijah |
| Mozart | Requiem |
| Pergolesi | Stabat Mater |
| Orff | Carmina Burana |
| Vivaldi | Gloria and Introduzione |
| 'Love and Dreams' - with Eugene Asti (piano) | |
| 'It Fell on a Summer's Day' - with Elizabeth Kenny (lute) |
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