The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) and Naxos Records have joined forces to launch a series of debut discs for students at the conservatoire.

When the RBC recently unveiled its £57m new building, recording facilities and technology were an integral part (the conservatoire boasts no fewer than seven recording studios), and the new albums will be made in its Bradshaw Hall auditorium. Also integral to Principal Julian Lloyd Webber’s vision of the institution is that students experience a wide breadth of what being a musician encompasses - recording, Gramophone readers will be heartened to hear, being a crucial part of that.

The students chosen to launch the partnership are pianists Daniel Lebhardt,  Roman Kosyakov, Pascal Pascaleff, Andrey Ivanov and Domonkos Czaby, and violist Yue Yu, and repertoire covered will include Liszt, Scarlatti, Schumann, Holst, Britten and York Bowen. 

'I am delighted that Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is able to offer our talented students this extraordinary opportunity to record for one of the world’s leading record labels at the very start of their careers,' said Lloyd Webber 'I am certain that they will make the most of this unprecedented agreement'.

Last year, Gramophone interviewed Julian Lloyd Webber for a podcast about his plans for the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire: listen to it here