Howard Shelley, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins
Biography Howard Shelley, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins
Howard Sehelly
As pianist, conductor and recording artist Howard Shelley has enjoyed a distinguished career since his highly acclaimed London debut in 1971, performing regularly with renowned orchestras at major venues around the world. He has been closely associated with the music of Rachmaninov and has performed and recorded complete and award-winning cycles of that composer’s solo piano works, concertos and songs. In the last five years he has performed complete cycles of the piano concertos of both Mozart and Beethoven in London with the London Mozart Players. Most of his current work is in the combined role of conductor and soloist. This is reflected also in his discography which now exceeds 160 CDs, all highly praised. He has appeared in several television documentaries, including ‘Mother Goose’, a documentary on Ravel which won a Gold Medal at the New York Festivals Awards.
As conductor he has worked with all the major London orchestras and many other orchestras in the UK and abroad including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, City of Mexico Philharmonic, Munich Symphony, St Gallen Symphony and Nuremberg Symphony. He has toured to Australia for over thirty consecutive years, and performs now as both conductor and soloist with the Melbourne Symphony, Adelaide Symphony and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra – with the latter he has recorded seventeen volumes (and rising) for Hyperion’s Romantic Piano series. His long association with the London Mozart Players has been recognised by the title of Conductor Laureate. In 1994 HRH The Prince of Wales conferred on him an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Music and in 2009 he was awarded an OBE for services to classical music.
