Voted into the top ten of a new generation of rising stars and hailed for his golden voice by Opera Now Magazine, Ilker Arcayürek is the winner of the 2016 International Art Song Competition of Stuttgart’s Hugo Wolf Academy. He was finalist of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition 2015 and has been selected a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists through 2017. He made his highly anticipated Wigmore Hall recital debut featuring lieder by Schubert and Schumann in autumn 2016.

 Loneliness is the theme that links all the songs on this album.  

 "Schubert and the feeling of solitude have been my companions for many years. We can find ourselves alone as the result of many different circumstances in life – unhappiness in love, a bereavement, or simply moving to another country. For me, however, being alone has never meant being ‘lonely’. A running brook, a broken heart, the bitter-sweet release of death – few composers have succeeded in setting these varied images to music as transparently as Schubert did. His diverse emotional and musical world had me under its spell from an early age.”  Ilker Arcayürek

 Pianist Simon Lepper, professor of piano accompaniment and vocal repertoire coach at the Royal College of Music, has been accompanying Ilker since 2012.  He has made a number of recordings for Champs Hill Records, including with Kitty Whately and Gillian Keith.