Peter Jacobs (born 17 August 1945) is an English pianist.
Jacobs was born in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Alexander Kelly (piano) and Eric Fenby (harmony). For a while he was Director of Music at Taunton School, but returned to London to begin his career as a concert pianist, examiner and adjudicator. His initial public performances were in chamber groups, and as part of a pianist duo with Elizabeth Lightoller [1] before making his solo debut at the Wigmore Hall on 9 May 1975 with a programme of little-known 20th century composers. [2]
He has continued to concentrate on out-of-the-way (particularly English and French) repertoire of the late 19th and 20th centuries throughout his subsequent career, playing works by such figures as Henry Balfour Gardiner, Alan Bush, Benjamin Dale, John Foulds, Trevor Hold, Billy Mayerl, Betty Roe, Harold Truscott and Percy Turnbull. He also performed the sometimes neglected piano works of more mainstream figures such as Frank Bridge and Vaughan Williams. [3] One of his first recordings in 1987 was The Lake in the Mountains, including the complete piano music of Vaughan Williams. [4] In the early 1990s Jacobs began recording for the then new Hyperion label, beginning with the complete solo piano music of Cécile Chaminade. [5] In 1996 he released the first complete recording of Charles Villiers Stanford's neglected 24 Preludes, Set 1, op. 163, [6] following up a year later with a recording of Set 2, op 179. [7]
Although many of his recordings have become unavailable over the years, in 2020 Heritage Records released two box sets of reissues under the British Piano Collection banner. [8] His recordings of ten of Harold Truscott's Piano Sonatas was reissued in 2021. [9] Jacobs returned to the studio in 2020 to record additional works by Trevor Hold, and again in 2021 to perform a sequence of British piano music from his repertoire hitherto unrecorded. [10] [11]
Jacobs is an Associated Board examiner. He has compiled three volumes of British music for Thames Publishing. [12] He has also served as head of keyboard at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, taking courses in the music of Schubert, Chopin and Mendelssohn. [13]
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic era. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. He was instrumental in raising the status of the Cambridge University Musical Society, attracting international stars to perform with it.
John Nicholson Ireland was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work "The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield, a formerly much-played Piano Concerto, the hymn tune Love Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man".
Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade was a French composer and pianist. In 1913, she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur, a first for a female composer. Ambroise Thomas said, "This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman."
Nikolai Demidenko is a Russian-born classical pianist.
Harold Truscott was a British composer, pianist, broadcaster and writer on music. Largely neglected as a composer in his lifetime, he made an important contribution to the British piano repertoire and was influential in spreading knowledge of a wide range of mainly unfashionable music.
Leslie John Howard 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".
Georgy Lvovich Catoire was a Russian composer of French heritage.
Paul Jacobs was an American pianist. He was best known for his performances of twentieth-century music but also gained wide recognition for his work with early keyboards, performing frequently with Baroque ensembles.
Edwin York Bowen was an English composer and pianist. Bowen's musical career spanned more than fifty years during which time he wrote over 160 works. As well as being a pianist and composer, Bowen was a talented conductor, organist, violist and horn player. Despite achieving considerable success during his lifetime, many of the composer's works remained unpublished and unperformed until after his death in 1961. Bowen's compositional style is widely considered ‘Romantic’ and his works are often characterized by their rich harmonic language.
Frank Merrick CBE was an English classical pianist and composer in the early 20th century.
Alan Gray was an English organist and composer.
Marie Novello, also known as Marie Novello Williams was a Welsh pianist. She was one of Theodor Leschetizky's last students and performed in public from childhood. Her early death cut short a promising career just as she began to record for one of the major English labels, having already amassed a considerable discography for one of its second-rank competitors.
Albert Ferber was a Swiss pianist who had an international performing career that spanned four decades and took him across the world.
Maurice Cole, was an English pianist, teacher and adjudicator. He was born in London and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and privately with Arthur De Greef in London and Brussels.
Kenneth Leighton was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.
Malcolm Binns is a British classical pianist.
Roger Sacheverell Coke was an English composer and pianist.
This is a summary of 1914 in music in the United Kingdom.
Charles Villiers Stanford's Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 70, was composed around 1898. Performed only once during the composer's lifetime, the sonata remained unpublished until 2006.
The Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major, Op. 11, was composed by Charles Villiers Stanford in 1877, shortly after the composer completed his studies in Germany. It was one of his first pieces of chamber music, preceded only by his A major cello sonata. First performed the year it was composed, the sonata was published in 1878 by Ries & Erler in Germany, with a dedication to violinist Ludwig Straus.