Leon McCawley

Praised for his unfailingly communicative playing, acclaimed British pianist Leon McCawley has been delighting audiences worldwide for over three decades.

His distinguished international career was launched in 1993 by a spectacular double success: winning First Prize at the International Beethoven Piano Competition and Second Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition.His programme opens with Mozart’s charming Sonata in G, K. 283, followed by Fanny Mendelssohn’s evocative Notturno in G minor, which she wrote in the style of a Venetian boat song just one year before her transformative trip to Italy in 1839.

Dedicated to his teacher Joseph Haydn, Beethoven’s Third Piano Sonata is often referred to as the first of his ‘grand and virtuosic’ piano sonatas, showcasing the young composer’s soaring artistic ambition.

Grieg’s Ballade in G minor is an expansive, deeply moving set of variations based on the Norwegian folk song Den nordlandske bondestand (‘The Northland Peasantry’).

Written following the death of his parents in 1875, Grieg held a profound emotional attachment to the work, noting that it was composed with his ‘life’s blood in days of sorrow and despair.’ Closing the programme is a wonderfully contrasting pair of works: Fauré’s exquisitely lyrical Fourth Nocturne offers a moment of serene, intimate reflection before Chopin’s notably exuberant Third Ballade – claimed to be inspired by Adam Mickiewicz’s poem Undine – brings the performance to a brilliant and dramatic close.‘One of today’s most impeccably musical pianists’ (International Piano)