Christopher Wrench (born 1958 in Brisbane, Australia) is a renowned organist and lecturer.[1][2]
Contents |
Wrench attended Brisbane Grammar School, the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and undertook postgraduate studies in Vienna at the Vienna Conservatorium and then at the Hochschule für Musik (with Michael Radulescu).[3][4]
Wrench has gained considerable success as an organist in international competitions winning the St. Albans (Audience Prize) and Odense, Denmark (First Prize, 1992).[3]
Wrench returned to Australia in 1991 where he became Lecturer in Organ at the Queensland Conservatorium.[3] He appears regularly as a recitalist throughout Australia and Europe and has performed as soloist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the Queensland Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. One review of a performance of Wrench in 2005 recorded,
"Christopher’s was the last of three, all featuring the music of Bach, presented as part of the 4MBS Festival of Classics. The nature of the music, filled with Bach’s focus on the Almighty, was an intense affair, marked with Wrench’s marvellous musicianship, an abiding sense of architecture and, it seems paradoxical to say amidst such rigour, an expressive freedom of phrasing."[1]
Another review recorded,
Wrench is heavily in demand and combines his work as performer and teacher with his passion for liturgical music in his position as Director of Music at St. Mary's Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point in Brisbane.[5]