Howard Shelley

British pianist and conductor (born 1950)

Howard Gordon Shelley (born 9 March 1950) is a British pianist and conductor. He was educated at Highgate School and the Royal College of Music. He was married to fellow pianist Hilary Macnamara till her death in 2021, with whom he performed and recorded in a two piano partnership, and they have two sons.

After winning the premier prize at the Royal College of Music at the end of his first year, Howard Shelley's career began with a successful London recital and a televised BBC Proms concert with the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas in the same season. Since then he has performed regularly throughout the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, North America, Russia, Australia, and the Far East. He has also made over seventy five commercial recordings. In 1994, an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Music was conferred on him by the Prince of Wales. As pianist he has performed, broadcast and recorded around the world with leading orchestras and conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pierre Boulez, Sir Adrian Boult, Colin Davis, Mariss Jansons, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Kurt Sanderling. During the fortieth anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff's death he became the first pianist ever to perform the composer's complete solo piano works in concert. The five London recitals, in London's Wigmore Hall, were broadcast in their entirety by the BBC. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Rachmaninoff's death Howard Shelley gave many concerts including a recital in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on the day itself (28 March 1993) and a recital at Rachmaninoff's villa in Lucerne at the invitation of the composer's grandson. He has given complete cycles of Rachmaninoff concertos with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Beethoven concertos with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Mozart concerto series with the London Mozart Players, Camerata Salzburg and the Munich Symphony Orchestra. In March 2015 he performed Rachmaninoff's 3rd concerto for the first time under the baton of his son, Alexander Shelley, together with the Nuremberg Symphony. Howard Shelley also featured in a documentary of Rachmaninoff shown on BBC television. Shelley was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.