Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (born 1948) is an Australian pianist, musicologist and composer. He is best known for completing the largest solo piano recording project ever undertaken, with more than three hundred premiere recordings.
Born in Melbourne, he made his mature debut at thirteen and later finished postgraduate studies in Italy. He has lived in London since 1972 and holds dual Australian and British nationality.
His landmark Hyperion survey of Liszt’s piano music eventually ran to one hundred discs and earned a place in the Guinness records. He has also recorded widely beyond that project, edited Liszt and other scores for publication, and composed chamber music, piano works and an opera. His best-known original work is the 24 Classical Preludes for Piano, Op. 25, cycling through the major and minor keys each in a different composer’s style.
On Tall Poppies he appears in two-piano repertoire on Porgy & Bess Fantasy (TP275).
Leslie Howard appears on
Porgy & Bess Fantasy: Music for Two Pianos
In the early 1980s two of Australia’s finest pianists joined forces in masterpieces of the piano-duet literature. The set draws on concert and studio sessions from a period when such collaborations were still readily captured.