PETER DONOHOE was born in Manchester in 1953 and studied at the Royal Northern College with Derek Wyndham and then in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. Since his unprecedented success at the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, he has developed a distinguished career in Europe, the U.S.A., the Far East, and Australasia.

In recent seasons he has appeared with the five London orchestras, regional U.K. orchestras, and across Europe with the Berlin Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Dresden Philharmonic, Swedish Radio, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Czech Philharmonic, and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. He has performed regularly at the BBC Proms and at major festivals, including six consecutive visits to the Edinburgh Festival, a visit to the renowned French piano festival at La Roque D'Antheron, and in Germany at the Festival of the Ruhr and the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival. In the United States he has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Dallas, St. Louis, and Detroit symphony orchestras, and the Cleveland Orchestra.

Peter Donohoe has made many recordings on EMI Records and has won awards for his recording of the Liszt Sonata in B minor (the Grand Pris International du Disque Liszt) and for the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 (the Gramophone Concerto Award). Further EMI releases include the three Bartók Piano Concertos with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle, Beethoven's "Diabelli" Variations and Sonata, Op. 101, and the complete Rachmaninoff Preludes.

His first recording for Chandos Records, of the complete repertoire by Messiaen for piano and wind instruments with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, has received widespread acclaim, as has his recording for Hyperion of Litolff's Concerti Symphoniques Nos. 2 and 4. For Naxos he has recorded the Elgar Piano Quintet in A minor with the Maggini String Quartet, and further recordings for that label last year include a Finzi disc to celebrate the centennial of the composer's birth, and the Rawsthorne Piano Concertos with the Ulster Orchestra.