Antonis Hatzinikolaou

Born in Greece in 1980, Antonis Hatzinikolaou graduated from Philippos Nakas Conservatory in Athens, where he studied with Alexandra Christodimou, proceeding to the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he gained his Postgraduate Diploma in Performance, under the tutelage of Michael Lewin, Timothy Walker and John Mills. Having completed a concert project exploring John Dowland’s idiosyncratic evocation of melancholy as reflected in Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal, Op. 70, he received his MMus Degree with a Distinction. He was additionally awarded the Reginald Thatcher Award for General Excellence, and the Honorary Dip RAM – the highest performance award conferred by the Academy.

He has attended masterclasses with many of the world’s leading guitarists, including John Williams, David Russell, Manuel Barrueco, Roberto Aussel, Roland Dyens, Hubert Käppel, Fabio Zanon, Aniello Desiderio, Jonathan Leathwood and Edoardo Catemario, and he has also worked with composers such as Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Nicholas Maw, John McCabe, Stephen Dodgson, Bayan Northcott and Evis Sammoutis. He has received distinctions in numerous international guitar competitions, including the Patras National Guitar Competition (Greece, 2001), the International Koblenz Guitar Competition “Hubert Käppel” (Germany, 2004), the Ivor Mairants International Guitar Award (UK, 2005) and the prestigious Julian Bream Prize (UK, 2006), adjudicated by the maestro himself.

After receiving the 2007 Park Lane Group Young Artist Award he made his Purcell Room debut in 2008, which led to solo recitals at St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the 2008 Sounds New Festival in Canterbury. His professional engagements have taken him to Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain and the UK where he has also been heard on BBC Radio 3. In addition to his solo playing, he is a versatile chamber musician. He was an accompanist for the NMC Songbook and is guitarist of the Fugata Quintet touring the tango-based music of Astor Piazzolla. In 2008, Draft Records released his debut solo CD, which Classical Guitar Magazine described as: “Magnificent … simply magnificent! …this is playing of the highest standard (containing some of the best Bach performance the reviewer has heard) and easily stands alongside the best of them …”.