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Howard Shelley
After winning the premier prize at the Royal College of
Music at the end of his first year, Howard Shelley's
career began with a highly successful London recital and
a televised Promenade concert with the London Symphony
Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas in the same
season. Since then he has performed regularly throughout
the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, North America, Russia,
Australia, and the Far East. He has also made over one
hundred highly acclaimed commercial recordings.
As pianist he has performed, broadcast and recorded around the world
with leading orchestras and conductors including Ashkenazy, Boulez,
Boult, Davis, Jansons, Rozhdestvensky and Sanderling. In a unique series
of five London recitals, broadcast by the BBC, he played Rachmaninov's
complete solo piano music. He has given complete cycles of Rachmaninov
concertos with the Royal Scottish National, Beethoven concertos with the
BBC Philharmonic and Mozart concerto series with the London Mozart
Players, Camerata Salzburg and Munich Symphony.
As conductor he has performed with the London Philharmonic, London
Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, the Philharmonia, Royal
Scottish National and Ulster orchestras as well as the Hong Kong
Philharmonic, Filarmonica de la Ciudad de Mexico, Munich Symphony,
Seattle Symphony, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra and West Australian Symphony Orchestra, amongst many others.
He has held positions of Associate and Principal Guest Conductor with
the London Mozart Players in a close relationship of over twenty years.
He has toured with them to Japan, Korea, Germany, Sweden, Italy,
Holland, Ireland and to the Prague Autumn Festival. Their many
recordings together have in every case received exceptional critical
acclaim. Shelley has also been Principal Conductor of Sweden's Uppsala
Chamber Orchestra and works closely with the Camerata Salzburg,
Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto in Italy and the Tasmanian Symphony
Orchestra in Australia with whom he has recorded several discs. Other
chamber orchestras with whom he has worked include the English Chamber
Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Swedish Chamber, Zurich Chamber,
Netherlands Chamber & Stuttgart Chamber orchestras, the Northern
Sinfonia, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Leipzig Kammerphilharmonie & the
Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano.
He has appeared regularly on television since the age of ten when he
gave a recital of Bach and Chopin. He was soloist at the 100th
anniversary of the Promenade Concerts, a concert which was televised
world-wide. A documentary on Ravel made in 1998 by the Australian
Broadcasting Commission, featuring Shelley as conductor, pianist and
presenter won the Gold Medal for the best arts biography of the year at
the New York Festivals Awards.
His many recordings for Chandos, Hyperion and EMI include
award-winning sets of Rachmaninov's complete piano music and concertos,
series of Mozart, Hummel, Mendelssohn, Moscheles and Cramer concertos as
well as all Gershwin's works for piano & orchestra and a series of
British concertos including Alwyn, Bridge, Howells, Rubbra, Scott,
Tippett and Vaughan Williams.
Howard Shelley is married to fellow pianist Hilary Macnamara, with
whom he has performed and recorded in a two-piano partnership, and they
have two sons. In 1994 an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of
Music was conferred on him by HRH The Prince of Wales. In the 2009 New
Year's Honours he was awarded an OBE for services to classical music.
Link to highlights of Howard Shelley's 2010/2011 season.
Link to Howard Shelley's discography.
Link to Howard Shelley's reviews.
Link to Howard Shelley's 60th Birthday Tour
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