Peter Donohoe

Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:01:02 minutes | 948 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

The much anticipated second volume of Peter Donohoe’s complete survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas for SOMM Recordings focuses on three sonatas produced during the composer’s ill-fated journey to Paris in 1777.
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Peter Donohoe – Busoni: Toccata, BV 287, Elegien, BV 252, Sonatina No. 6, BV 284 & Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C Major, BV B 29 No. 1 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:57 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Peter Donohoe CBE studied at Chetham’s School of Music and Leeds University before going on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique. He first came across the works of Busoni in the early 1980s and, as he states in his booklet note, “Busoni’s contribution to the musical history of the twentieth century is inestimable, and I feel very much enriched by the several decades of my exposure to it”.
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Peter Donohoe – Rachmaninoff: Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op. 22 – Chopin: Piano Sonatas, Opp. 35 & 58 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:35 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the return of pianist Peter Donohoe to the label, following his acclaimed complete survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, with a dazzling new recital coupling Rachmaninoff – on the 150th anniversary of his birth in 1873 – and Chopin.

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Peter Donohoe – Mendelssohn: Songs without words, Vol. 2 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:29 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Lieder ohne Worte – Songs without Words – seems to be a description invented by Mendelssohn himself for these short, lyrical and descriptive piano pieces which he composed so prolifically. Indeed, it is arguable that these works define his pianistic output in the same way that the Mazurka defines Chopin’s. Publishing them in sets of six, Mendelssohn composed Lieder ohne Worte throughout his career – they proved a type of composition to which he had a lifetime attraction. For the first volume, rather than approaching them chronologically or as complete sets, Peter Donohoe selected pieces to build a satisfying programme. Here he does the same with all the pieces that remain. In addition, the album features three free-standing significant works. The 17 Variations sérieuses, from 1841, is one of Mendelssohn’s largest solo piano works, and was published in an album to raise funds for a monument to Beethoven. The Phantasie on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ is a much earlier work, based on the Irish folk melody that – with added words by the Irish poet Thomas Moore – took Europe by storm in the early 1800s. The album concludes with Rachmaninoff’s piano transcription of the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

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Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 6 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 59:49 minutes | 897 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

SOMM Recordings’ acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas by Peter Donohoe reaches its end with Volume 6 featuring four works illustrating the composer’s endless fascination and creative invention with the piano.

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Peter Donohoe – Haydn: Keyboard Works Vol. 1 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:33:56 minutes | 2,45 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Classics

“Cradling his programme of Sonatas in a set of strongly contrasted Variations and a Divertimento, Peter Donohoe takes an enlivening slant, a sense of ‘rediscovery’ of Haydn’s ambiguity, indeed, unique character” – Bryce Morrison

Since his success as joint winner of the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition, Peter Donohoe has gained international renown as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

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Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 5 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:17 minutes | 956 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

SOMM Recordings’ survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas by Peter Donohoe nears its end with “Volume 5” featuring three works from very different periods of the composer’s life.

The earliest Sonata No. 3 in B-flat major, K. 281, from 1775, shows the 18-year-old composer in effervescent mood, nimbly drawing on French and Italian influences, with a cadenza composed by Donohoe for its Rondo finale. From January, 1788, the latest Sonata No. 15 in F major, K. 533/494, is an ingenious exercise in compromised creativity. Finding himself short of time, Mozart revised an earlier Rondo for the finale to two chromatically rich original movements caught between the Salzburg Serenades he was keen to leave behind and the aria-like coloratura he hoped would appeal to audiences.

A decade earlier, the Sonata No. 13 in B-flat major was composed in Paris as Mozart reeled from the death of his mother and the failure of his bid for success in the French capital. His only consolation had been an encounter with Johann Christian Bach, from whom Christopher Morley says in his authoritative booklet notes, he “learned balance and dialogue (the characteristic answering to an assertive masculine opening statement by a yielding, delicate feminine response…) and these qualities inform K. 333”.

This SOMM’s “Mozart Sonatas” survey has attracted superlative reviews.
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Peter Donohoe – Tchaikovsky: Solo Piano Works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:52 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Classics

Tchaikovsky’s contemporaries tell us that he was good enough to become a concert pianist, if he had chosen to follow that path. But he preferred to focus on composition, and rarely performed in public concerts. His interest in the piano is mainly to be found in his many pieces for the instrument, and since most of these were suitable for amateurs with solid skills, they sold well and played an important role in building up his fame. Despite this, some view Tchaikovsky’s solo piano works as poor quality. Peter Donohoe disagrees, insisting that all music requires performers to find the right approach, so he does not see Tchaikovsky as any kind of exception. He writes:

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Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:18 minutes | 972 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

“The third volume of Peter Donohoe’s acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas for SOMM Recordings focuses on three works from the second half of the 1780s – including his last exercise in the form, Sonata No.18 (K576) – together with two exquisite miniatures.

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Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:58 minutes | 960 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

Volume 4 of Peter Donohoe’s acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas on SOMM Recordings focuses on the composer’s adoption of the newly emerging pianoforte and his bold exploitation of its more sophisticated voicing.

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Peter Donohoe – Mendelssohn: Songs without Words Vol.1 (Lieder ohne Worte) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:55 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Although Mendelssohn was a virtuoso and celebrated pianist, his anything but incidental piano work unfortunately leads a rather shadowy existence in concert today. Of course, this does not apply to his popular songs without words, a genre that he himself has developed. In this recording for CHANDOS, Peter Donohoe does not present a complete opera, but a selection from the individual collections in the sense of a concert program. In the first episode he also complements them with the capriccioso Op. 14 and the Trois Fantaisies ou Caprices Op. 16.
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