‘An outstanding and distinctive voice in British music’, Raymond Yiu has worked with some of the best artists and ensembles in the U.K. and internationally. Winner and four-time nominee of the Ivors Classical Awards, his works have featured in festivals including Cheltenham Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Manchester International Festival and BBC Proms.
He was nominated for a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in 2018 and 2020.
‘Dazzling’ Violin Concerto Received World Premiere in London
Six years in the making. Yiu’s Violin Concerto, written for the American-Korean violinist Esther Yoo was given its world premiere on 20th March at Barbican Hall, with Yoo as the soloist, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Clemens Schuldt. It was inspired by the life and works of the Chinese violinist and composer Ma Sicong (1912-87). Once considered China’s most celebrated musician, his fortune turned when the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution swept through the country in 1966, and Ma became a target for criticism and torture. The following year he and his family escaped to U.S.A. and never to return to China. This concerto is partly a meditation on exile, and partly an ode to the development of Western music in China. Co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Seattle Symphony, the work will received its Asian premiere and North American premiere in February and April of 2025 respectively.
Transcultural Composing in The Cambridge Companion to Composition
Yiu is one of the contributors to the eagerly awaited The Cambridge Companion to Composition, published in May 2024. Its twenty chapters tackle different aspects of the life of, as well as challenges faced by a composer. Yiu’s chapter considers the relationship between composing, heritage and identity, examining what happens when musical influence and practice are reimagined across traditions and cultures. It looks at several case studies to unpick geographical, social, political, and racial musical associations, and reflects critically on composing outside the colonial dominance of Western-centric musical practices.
Canzonetta in ABRSM 2025-26 Grade 4 Piano Syllabus
Canzonetta, a melancholic memorial to the late soprano Jane Manning and composer Anthony Payne, was commissioned by ABRSM for its 2025-26 Grade 4 Piano syllabus. This is Yiu’s fourth commissioned work for ABRSM syllabus, beginning with his arrangement of the Chinese folksong Si Ji Ge (Song off the Four Seasons) for the 2016-19 Grade 2 Violin syllabus. It was followed by Lullaby (for Edna Trident Hornbryce), a tribute to Richard Rodney Bennett for 2019-202 Grade 8 Piano syllabus and Bauhinia Soft-Shoe for Grade 4 Clarinet syllabus from 2022.
Debut Album The World Was Once All Miracle
The London Citizen Exceedingly Injured, Symphony and The World Was Once All Miracle, three major orchestral works written between 2012 and 2017, all thrillingly performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with an all-star line-up of performers including Andrew Watts. Roderick Williams, Sir Andrew Davis, Edward Gardner and David Robertson.
“Virtuoso handling of the orchestra is also a feature of Yiu’s Symphony, first heard at the 2015 Proms ... While the poems share a theme of loss and remembrance, the symphony is anything but morosely introspective. There are pile-ups of Ivesian complexity, wisps of dreamy lyricism, evocations of 1970s disco (for the Gunn setting) and a final outburst of unmistakable radiance. Six years after the premiere (the performance here is a recording of that event) it still seems fresh, totally original and hugely impressive.”
“Now the enterprising Delphian label has put together a substantial programme of high-quality radio recordings, meticulously re-edited, with valuable booklet notes by John Fallas and Paul Griffiths. The result leaves no doubt whatever that Yiu is a composer with plenty to say and refreshingly direct, uninhibited ways of saying it ... As with his use of quotation in the two other works on the disc, the various allusions and associations do not draw attention to themselves as extraneous inserts, and Yiu’s own idiom is all the stronger for that.”
“This terrifically engaging disc of music by Raymond Yiu opens with a bang. The London Citizen Exceedingly Injured (2012) nigh-on shimmers with invention. The piece was sparked by an unlikely array of stimuli which Yiu magics into a concerto for orchestra that by turns flutters, pulses and stabs with a vivid sense of wit and colour ... Yiu’s (First) Symphony is as much a song cycle as a symphony, with a glorious performance here from countertenor Andrew Watts ... the recording finds the BBCSO on brilliantly agile form and in every way a match for Yiu’s electric musical imagination.”
“While the motivic germ [of ‘The London Citizen Exceedingly Injured’] is a borrowing from Elgar’s Cockaigne – a portrait of a very different London – this “game for orchestra” soon explodes into a restless, shifting menagerie of colour, gesture and references. There is violence and calm, industrial grit and spiritual calm, pealing church bells, wanton dance pastiche. It’s a crazy cacophony, skittish in parts, but hugely addictive.”
“Yiu has a natural gift for orchestral writing, with a keen sense for timbral blending and theatrical characterization, in the manner of Ravel ... this is an excellent introduction to a stellar artist in Britain’s new music scene.”
“All three works are conceived as brilliant fusions of diverse musical strata into genuinely original musical language. Both engaging and challenging, the new album is one of those disc that get better and better upon each listen, as any good music does ... An album of delights, The World Was Once All Miracle presents us with one of the most imaginative and talented composers of our time, with impeccable craft and gorgeous visions.”
“Yiu is an outstanding and distinctive voice in British music – all the more so for his Asian origins, which throw up issues of identity that he explores productively as well as playfully in what he writes.”
“Symphony covers a lot of ground over its six sections, the composer refusing to be predictable or becoming stuck in a rut – from exhilarating to ravishingly expressive via countertenor as jazz-singer. Maybe it shouldn’t add up… but it does: Symphony climaxes ecstatically and the otherworldly close is haunting.”
“Raymond Yiu writes with flair and handles a large orchestra resourcefully. Perhaps above all it’s the colours that he creates that have impressed me. The BBCSO has established a deserved reputation for giving expert performances of challenging new scores; these three performances show that Yiu’s music could hardly be in better hands, with three excellent conductors to guide the proceedings and two top-class soloists ... Delphian have shown great enterprise in issuing these performances. If you want to hear recent music by a composer with a distinctive voice then I’d urge you to investigate this CD.”