Leslie Howard

This has been another busy season for pianist Leslie Howard. Tours of the United States, China and Australia and engagements in Britain and Europe have seen him enthralling audiences.

A citizen both of Britain and Australia, Leslie Howard has accomplished a feat unequalled by any solo artist in recording history – his 99-CD survey for Hyperion of the complete piano music of Franz Liszt. This critically acclaimed project merited Leslie Howard’s entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, six Grands Prix du Disque, the Medal of St. Stephen, the Pro Cultura Hungarica award and a mounted bronze cast of Liszt’s hand presented by the Hungarian President. In 1999 the Queen bestowed on him “Member in the Order of Australia” for his “service to the arts as piano soloist, composer, musicologist and mentor to young musicians”.

Leslie Howard has appeared internationally with the world’s finest orchestras, including the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, English Northern Philharmonia, RTE National Symphony of Dublin, Hanover Band, Utah Symphony, Maryland Symphony, Mexico Philharmonic, Orchestra della Scala, Budapest Philharmonic, Budapest Symphony, and the orchestras of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Queensland and Tasmania in Australia.

His 130-CD discography contains many other important world première recordings, including the four piano sonatas of Anton Rubinstein, the three piano sonatas of Tchaikovsky and a disc of Scandinavian piano sonatas. During the past year Leslie Howard has recorded four new CDs: Liszt New Discoveries 3 – a 2-CD set of world première recordings; 25 Etudes in Black and White – his own compositions recorded for ArtCorp; and, most recently, a disc pairing the two Rakhmaninov piano sonatas. In addition, he has produced an Urtext edition of the Liszt sonata for Edition Peters and a new reconstruction and orchestration of Paganini’s fifth violin concerto for the collected Paganini Edition.