Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard AM (born 29 April 1948) is an Australian pianist and composer. He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete works for piano solo of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings. However, his activities go far beyond Liszt, and he has been described by The Guardian as "a master of a tradition of pianism in serious danger of dying out".

Howard was born in Melbourne, Australia, the eldest of 4 children. He has lived in London, England since 1972, preferring its climate to that of his native country. The rest of his family continues to live in or near Melbourne. Howard's brother William Howard is a cellist. Leslie Howard has both Australian and British nationality.

Howard has an unusual history, beginning at the age of 2 when he elbowed his nursery-school headmistress off the piano because she was harmonising the songs incorrectly. (He himself was only able to span a 6th at the time.)[citation needed]

Howard's ability to recall anything by ear, and perfect pitch, was first cited in The Herald, Melbourne[1], when he was 5 years old. At the age of 5 he performed for Fox Movietone News, and at the age of 9 on Australian national television. His mature debut as a pianist came at the age of 13, with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. He learned the oboe at an early age, and has even performed Mozart’s Oboe Concerto. He does not play the oboe these days.

He attended Monash University in Melbourne, to study English, but by the end of his first year had been invited to lecture the post-graduate students on advanced counterpoint and theory. His post-graduate music studies were completed in Italy, where he studied with Guido Agosti.

In 1987 Howard became an instructor at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He can often be heard giving masterclasses at London's Royal College of Music and Royal Academy of Music.

He frequently appears with deserving student pianists, to help their careers. Examples are performances of Liszt's arrangement for two pianos of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, with Coady Green; piano duets of Percy Grainger with Michael Brownlee-Walker; and conducting a performance of Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto in London's Wigmore Hall, and then again at the Royal Festival Hall for the Pearl Awards, with a 9-year old Chinese pianist as soloist.

Leslie Howard is also frequently invited to sit on the juries of music competitions, such as the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition, and the Royal Over-Seas League's annual music competition.

He has a huge repertoire of solo and chamber music, and more than 80 works with orchestra. He was a founding member of the now-disbanded London Beethoven Trio, which gave regular performances for a number of years.

Howard is a Steinway Artist, one of only 1500 in the world. (One can only become a Steinway Artist by invitation from Steinway, and upon the recommendation of another Steinway Artist.) This means that Howard chooses to perform exclusively on Steinway pianos where possible, and is the owner of at least one Steinway instrument. Steinway does not provide its artists with free or subsidised instruments (and also does not allow payment in installments - all its pianos must be fully paid for at once), but it does provide pianos for use by its artists in concerts.


Liszt project

In 1986, to mark the centenary of Liszt's death, Howard gave a series of ten Liszt recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall. By excluding Liszt's arrangements (fantasies and transcriptions) of other composers' works, and by selecting only the final versions of Liszt's original works for solo piano, Howard was able to represent Liszt's entire solo piano oeuvre in these mammoth recital programmes.

The founder and Managing Director of Hyperion Records was present at these recitals, and invited Howard to record for the label. This resulted in the largest recording project ever undertaken by a recording artist (including pop artists)[citation needed] – that of the complete music for solo piano of Liszt. All Liszt's versions of his piano music were included, including more than 300 premiere performances and recordings, and pieces unheard since Liszt's lifetime, and also all arrangements of other composers' work. Four discs were given to Liszt's seventeen works for piano and orchestra, about half of which were premiere recordings made from unpublished manuscripts. The series ran to 94 full-length CDs, and has earned Howard a place in the Guinness Book Of Records. (The second volume of works for piano and orchestra included a bonus disc, not counted in the series numbering, which contained a work for piano and orchestra by Liszt's favourite female student Sophie Menter: Liszt's exact involvement in the work is unknown, but he probably helped Menter in the composition of the solo part in the year before his death; the work was orchestrated seven years later by Menter's friend Tchaikovsky, who conducted Menter in the premiere the following year). The last disc of the Liszt series was recorded in December 1998, and released on 22 October 1999, Liszt's birthday. Since completion of the project, two supplementary volumes have been released as further Liszt manuscripts have come to light. At the time of writing, sufficient material is available for a third supplementary volume: a double-disc will be released shortly. This will bring the total number of CDs in the series to 98.

Claims by other pianists to have recorded the complete piano works of Liszt (such as those by France Clidat, whose Liszt recordings total just 28 CDs; and Gunnar Johansen whose private home recordings number 53 LPs) are demonstrably incorrect.

A critic in the BBC Music Magazine declared: "Howard is, by general consensus, the finest living exponent of Liszt. (He has) a formidable intellectual grasp of the music, (and) his vastly superior performances continue to carry the day." As further indication of the status he enjoys among Liszt scholars, Howard was invited to perform at the inauguration of the Istituto Liszt in Bologna, Italy, of which he is an honorary member.

He has been invited by the music publishers Edition Peters to edit the republication of some of their Liszt scores, correcting previous inaccuracies by a return to manuscript sources.

He has also edited several volumes of Liszt Society Publications for Hardie Press and Editio Musica Budapest.

With Michael Short he has published Ferenc Liszt - A List of his Musical Works (Rugginenti, 2004) and Ferenc Liszt - A Thematic Catalogue (Pendragon, 2005). He has a book in progress, The Music of Liszt (Yale University Press).

Honours related to his Liszt work

He has been the President of the British Liszt Society for 21 years (since the death of the previous president Louis Kentner), and has also been awarded the American Liszt Society's Medal of Honor.

In 2000 he was awarded the Pro Cultura Hungarica Medal and Citation by the Hungarian Government, a rare honour for a non-Hungarian. He had previously received from the Hungarian government the Ferenc Liszt Medal of Honour, and he has also been awarded France's Grand Prix du Disque six times for his Liszt recordings - all presented to him by the President of Hungary.

In 2004 he was decorated by the President of Hungary with the Medal of St. Stephen[2].

Composer

Howard is also active as a composer, and has written an opera, a marimba concerto, chamber music, and many piano pieces. Howard's best known work is his "24 Classical Preludes for Piano, Op. 25", cycling through the major and minor keys, each written in the style of a different composer. Howard has recorded this work for Cavendish Music (Boosey & Hawkes).

In 1997 Howard was commissioned by Gramophone magazine to compose and record a short piano piece ("Yuletide Pastorale") for its Christmas Competition: a CD was given away with the magazine, and readers were asked to state in which composer's style the piece was written, and to identify the seven well-known Christmas melodies concealed within it.

Among Howard's arrangements and transcriptions are the final chorale movements of Bach's cantatas nos. 60 and 209, Glazunov's Second Concert Waltz, and the aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" from the opera La Wally by Alfredo Catalani.

Editor

In addition to his work editing and completing many of Liszt's scores, Howard has prepared for publication operas by Vincenzo Bellini, and the violin concertos of Paganini, including the first edition of Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1 ever to be published in the correct key of E-flat (it usually played from an erroneous edition in D major, the orchestration of which is not by Paganini).

Howard's facility in completing unfinished works has resulted in commissions as diverse as a new realisation of Bach's Musical Offering, which he orchestrated and conducted in Finland in 1990, and completions of works by composers such as Mozart (String Quartet movement K. 464a), Scriabin (Sonata in E-flat minor: end of the slow movement, and a 3-bar hole in the finale), Shostakovich (Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8: providing an alternative solution to that by Borys Lyatoshynsky), and Tchaikovsky (Piano Sonata in F minor).

In 2003, Boosey & Hawkes published Howard's "New Corrected Edition" of the 2-piano score of Rachmaninoff's 4th Piano Concerto (in collaboration with Robert Threlfall).

Recordings

In addition to his Liszt project, Leslie Howard's recordings include works by Balakirev, Bax, Borodin, Bridge, Bruckner, Busoni, Chopin, Rebecca Helferich Clarke, Franck, Ignaz Friedman, Gade, Gershwin, Glazunov, Grainger, Granados, Grieg, Moszkowski, Mozart, Palmgren, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff, Raff, Reger, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rossini, Anton Rubinstein, Sibelius, Smetana, Stravinsky, Tausig, Tchaikovsky, Vaughan Williams and Wagner.

Howard's website gives a complete list.

Road incident

In March 2008, Howard was found guilty at Croydon Crown Court (UK) of causing actual bodily harm during a road incident.[3] In May 2008, he was given a prison sentence of six months, suspended for 18 months. [4] An appeal is under consideration. Howard's travel has not been affected by the verdict: he has since been to countries including the USA, Italy, China, France, and Hungary.

Other honours

In addition to the Liszt-related honours mentioned above, Howard was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 1999, "for service to the arts as a musicologist, composer, piano soloist and mentor to young musicians."[5] In 2001 he was awarded a doctorate "honoris causa" by the University of Melbourne.