Leslie Howard (musician)

Leslie John Howard (born 29 April 1948) is an Australian pianist, musicologist and composer.

He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings.

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 the eldest of four children.

His brother William is a cellist.

Howard's ability to recall anything by ear, and perfect pitch, was first cited in Melbourne newspaper The Herald, 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 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.

He has lived in London since 1972, preferring its climate to that of his native country; he has both Australian and British nationality.

In 1986, to mark the centenary of Franz Liszt's death, Leslie 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 ten mammoth recital programmes.

The founder and managing director of Hyperion Records, Ted Perry, was present at these recitals, and invited Howard to record for the label.

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 Liszt's arrangements of other composers' works.

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were given to Liszt's seventeen works for piano and orchestra, about half of which were premiere recordings made from unpublished manuscripts.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 at first to 94 full-length CDs, and earned Howard a place in The Guinness Book of Records for completion of the largest recording project ever undertaken by a solo recording artist (including pop artists).

(The second volume of works for piano and orchestra included a bonus disc, not counted in the series numbering, which contained Ungarische Zigeunerweisen, 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 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who conducted Menter in the premiere the following year).

In 1987 Howard became an instructor at the Guildhall School of Music.

He often gives masterclasses at the Royal College of Music and Royal Academy of Music.

He frequently appears with promising student pianists to help further 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.

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 large 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.

Leslie Howard has been the President of the British Liszt Society since the death of the previous president Louis Kentner in 1987, and has also been awarded the American Liszt Society's Medal of Honor.

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, three supplementary volumes have been released (the third of which is a double CD) as further Liszt manuscripts have come to light.

The total number of CDs in the series is now therefore 99.

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).

A boxed set containing all 99 discs has been issued by Hyperion Records in 2011 in honour of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Liszt.

In 2018, a new disc was released, including some undiscovered works, like the first version of the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1, and the Kavallerie-Geschwindmarsch, which was believed lost for over a century.

Claims by other pianists to have recorded the complete piano works of Liszt are demonstrably incorrect.

Such claims include those by France Clidat, whose Liszt recordings total just 28 CDs; and Gunnar Johansen, whose private home recordings number 53 LPs.

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.