Barry Douglas skyrocketed to a brilliant international career after winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Since then he has performed with all the major London orchestras and such leading foreign orchestras as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Gewandhaus of Leipzig, the symphony orchestras of Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland and Angeles, the Israel Philharmonic, as well as both nhk and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras in Japan. He has collaborated with many eminent conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Colin Davis, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel and Maaris Jansons.
Barry Douglas is particularly known for his performances of the large-scale Romantic repertoire (piano concertos by Brahms, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky), but he also excels in less familiar works such as Burleske by Richard Strauss and the concertos by Reger, Britten and Corigliano. He has recorded these works for bmg (the Reger Concerto coupled with Burleske, recorded with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Marek Janowski was awarded the Diapason d'Or). He opened the Dresden Philharmonic 2000/2001 season with all three piano concertos by Bart-k in one concert.
The performance of Krzysztof Penderecki's Piano Concerto at the 2002 'Warsaw Autumn' Festival is the work's European premiere. Barry Douglas will perform the same work during the Easter Festival in Cracow in April 2003, and in other venues this season and beyond.
The 2002/2003 season sees his residency at the City of London Festival during which he will appear with three recital programmes and will conduct Camerata Ireland, an all-Irish chamber orchestra that he founded with players from both Northern and Southern Ireland. Foreign tours will take the orchestra, with Douglas as conductor and soloist, to North America, South America and several European countries.
Barry Douglas received the Order of the British Empire (obe) in the 2002 New Year's Honours List for services to music. He has houses in Paris and Northern Ireland.