Distinguished pianist and scholar Roy Howat presents a public masterclass focused on nineteenth-century French music. Howat teaches at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and has published Debussy in Proportion (Cambridge, 1983) and The Art of French Piano Music (Yale, 2009). A Steinway Artist, he is editing the Urtext version of Gabriel Fauré's works for Peters Edition.
ARTIST BIO
ROY HOWAT is internationally renowned as both pianist and scholar whose concerts, broadcasts and lectures regularly take him worldwide. A graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, he made a special study of French music in Paris with Vlado Perlemuter, and is one of few British artists repeatedly invited to teach and play French music at major French-speaking Conservatoires and on French radio. He is specially known for his lively lectures and masterclasses, which he has given worldwide at venues including the USA’s Juilliard and Eastman Schools. In a wide-ranging career he has also conducted professionally, played violin in major London chamber orchestras, and held University posts in several countries.
A Steinway Artist, Roy Howat knows much of his concert repertoire from the composers’ manuscripts, and was one of the editors invited by the late François Lesure, along with Pierre Boulez and others, to found the Paris-based Complete Debussy Edition (Œuvres Complètes de Claude Debussy), for which he has edited much of the piano music. Among his other publications are Urtext volumes of Fauré (mostly for Peters Edition), two seminal books (Debussy in proportion and The Art of French piano music), an English edition of Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s classic Chopin, pianist and teacher, and chapters in numerous other books on Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók and other topics. His championship of Chabrier has led to recordings and a Dover edition of Chabrier’s marvellous piano music. Following a three-year AHRB Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, since 2003 he has been Keyboard Research Fellow at London’s Royal Academy of Music.
Roy Howat has played concerts and broadcast with an array of distinguished soloists, chamber groups and singers. His recent performances with the Panocha Quartet in Japan, the Czech Republic and the UK (including the Wigmore Hall) have brought the house down, and in 2001 he toured in Egypt as both pianist and violist with the Sarastro Ensemble.
Roy Howat’s recent book The Art of French piano music was chosen as 2009 Book of the Year by International Piano, and earned citations including ‘Outstanding’ in International Record Review and ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Classical Music. Equally enthusiastic reviews have appeared in Musical Times, Piano and Gramophone.