William Howard plays Sixteen Love Songs for Piano

William Howard performs pieces from his new album Sixteen Love Songs (to be released in June on Orchid Classics), which features some of the most hauntingly beautiful and romantic music in the piano repertoire. The programme will include love songs for solo piano by Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, (all arranged by Liszt), Liszt, Smetana, Dvořák, Fibich, Novák, Suk, Janáček, Fauré, Granados, and Kreisler (arr. Rachmaninov). William will also launch a new commissions project – Sixteen Contemporary Love Songs – with the world premiere of a brand new love song from Cheryl Frances-Hoad and a recently written love song by David Matthews. The recital will last 75 minutes, without an interval, and include introductions to the stories behind the pieces. Audience members are invited for a glass of wine after the concert.

William Howard, described in The Independent as “a pianist of quite special lustrousness and versatility”, is established as one of Britain’s leading pianists, enjoying a career that has taken him to over 40 different countries. His performing life consists of solo recitals, concerto performances, guest appearances with chamber ensembles and instrumentalists, and regular touring with the Schubert Ensemble of London, Britain’s leading group for piano and strings, which won the 1998 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Chamber Ensemble and celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. His recording of Pavel Zemek Novák's extraordinary 75-minute cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues received a double five-star review in the BBC Music Magazine, which described the performance as "superb" and the music "a real discovery". His latest recording of Sixteen Love Songs for solo piano will be released by Orchid Classics in June and will be the start of a wider project to commission sixteen new piano love songs and to set up a national composing competition.