Peter Donohoe studied piano with Derek Wyndham at the Royal Northern College of Music and after this continued his studies in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. It was Donohoe’s joint winning of the second prize with Vladimir Ovchinikov at the Moscow International Tchaikovsky Competition that launched his career. He has toured extensively in Europe, America and the Far East, appearing with all the world’s major orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony and Cleveland. Having developed a special relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Donohoe has played with them regularly since 1983; in 1989 he made his Carnegie Hall debut playing Debussy’s
complete études and Rachmaninov’s Préludes Op. 32. Donohoe takes part in many of the famous music festivals including the Festival of the Ruhr and the Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, and the Proms in England, and has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival for six consecutive years.

Donohoe’s early recordings were made for EMI after his win in Moscow and include repertoire by Stravinsky, Gershwin, Berg, Britten, and Dominic Muldowney. Some of them have won awards: his recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 Op. 44 won The Gramophone Concerto Award in 1986, and was described as ‘an inspirational new recording’, whilst his disc of the Liszt Sonata in B minor won the Grand Prix du Disque Franz Liszt. In comparing it to a recording by Alfred Brendel, The Gramophone magazine found Brendel ‘more reasoned’, but Donohoe to be ‘the more gripping’. One problem with this performance is the way Donohoe sustains the last note of the work in a fashion not indicated by the score. Donohoe has also recorded other major concertos, including Brahms’s No. 1 Op. 15, Tchaikovsky’s Nos 1 and 3 (which were not greeted with the same euphoria as his No. 2), and the three by Bartók with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle.

Donohoe also recorded Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas Nos 6–8 which were released in 1991. He had previously recorded the Sonata No. 6 shortly after his win in Moscow, but by the time of the second recording, he had lived with them for many years, and played them all in public. He also edited the scores for publication by Boosey and Hawkes in the same year that the recording was made. Of the Sonata No. 6, one critic found that it was ‘…not a high voltage, sensational performance in the manner of Kissin or Pogorelich. Instead, Donohoe favours a more broadly symphonic, more cogently unified view of the work.’ A performance from the 1988 Proms of Busoni’s Piano Concerto Op. 39 was released on compact disc by EMI in 1991: Donohoe has the stamina for this gargantuan work, and gives a commanding performance. It has adrenalin and a strong sense of Busoni’s underlying structure that is so important in this work, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Mark Elder giving Donohoe expert support.

One of Donohoe’s recent recordings was a compact disc in the Romantic Piano Concerto Series on the Hyperion label. Donohoe’s contribution, Volume 14, is of two Concerto Symphoniques by Henry Charles Litolff. The scherzo from the fourth of these works was at one time very famous, often being performed separately by such pianists as Irene Scharrer, Moura Lympany and Shura Cherkassky. It is good to hear the whole work, especially the andante religioso, the movement which follows the scherzo. Donohoe is in sparkling form in the scherzo and gives weight and authority to the rest of the work, as well as to the second concerto, of which this is the first recording. For Chandos, Donohoe has recorded a disc of Messiaen with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble.

Mainly a soloist with a repertoire based upon the Romantics and Russian school, Donohoe does, however, work with fellow pianist Martin Roscoe and the Maggini Quartet with whom he has recorded chamber works by British composers, another of his major interests. Recently, Donohoe established the British Piano Concerto Foundation of which he is artistic director. Its aims are to promote public awareness of piano concertos by British composers through performances and recordings by Naxos, who issued a disc of Gerald Finzi’s works to celebrate the centenary of the birth of that composer. Donohoe is vice president of the Birmingham Conservatory and has received honorary doctorates of music from the Universities of Birmingham, Central England and Warwick.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).