Selected as a “Talent to Watch” for 2007 by BBC Music Magazine, and described as “a rising star” (BBC Radio 3) and “one of Britain’s most exciting young pianists” (Classic FM), Matthew Schellhorn has a growing international career, which in recent seasons has seen recitals in Europe, Ireland and North America.

Born in Yorkshire in 1977, Matthew Schellhorn studied at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester and the University of Cambridge with David Hartigan, Maria Curcio, Ryszard Bakst and Peter Hill, and later in Paris with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen.

Matthew Schellhorn has been guest soloist at several international festivals, including the Three Choirs Festival, the Windsor Festival, the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts, Sounds New in Canterbury, the Kew Music Festival, and the Britten Sinfonia–BBC Radio 3 “Tippett 2005” festival in Cambridge. He has given performances in many major venues throughout the UK, including Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room (Southbank Centre) and St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham, the Djanogly Recital Hall in Nottingham, the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall in York, the Huntingdon Hall in Worcester, West Road Concert Hall and the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building in Oxford, and the De Montfort Hall in Leicester. He has performed live numerous times on BBC Radio 3, and in 2005 he was featured on Classic FM’s The Guest List.

Recent concerto performances have included appearances with the London Mozart Players (St John’s, Smith Square, London), sinfonia ViVA (The Assembly Rooms, Derby), and Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra (West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge). He has worked with numerous conductors, including Jane Glover, Peter Stark, Russell Keable, David Hill, Andrew Fardell, Stephen Cleobury and Baldur Brönnimann.

Matthew Schellhorn is a prominent performer of new music, with several works written for, or dedicated to, him, including The Will of the Tones by Jeremy Thurlow, Two Scherzos by Tim Watts, Berimbau by David Bruce, and Stations by Ian Wilson. Composers with whom he has worked include Hugh Wood, Robin Holloway, Alexander Goehr, Jeremy Thurlow, Cecilia McDowall, Ian Wilson, James Francis Brown, John Hawkins, Adrian Williams, Lloyd Moore, Gabriel Jackson, Jane O'Leary, Kenneth Hesketh, Joe Duddell, David Bruce, Patrick Nunn, Peter Wiegold, Tim Watts, Michael Zev Gordon, Colin Riley, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, and Nicola LeFanu. He has given numerous world and territorial premieres, most recently of Stations, a major new work written for him by Irish composer Ian Wilson. During 2008, he was a featured Park Lane Group Featured Young Artist, which resulted in giving premieres of works (with clarinettist Peter Sparks) by Peter Wiegold and Nicola LeFanu at the Southbank Centre. In 2009, he commissioned a set of six pieces to celebrate the Haydn bicentenary, which was published in Muso magazine. The composers involved in this project were Tim Watts, Michael Zev Gordon, Cecilia McDowall, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Colin Riley, and Jeremy Thurlow. During 2010, he collaborated with the award-winning Ossian Ensemble in appearances at the Sounds New Festival in Canterbury and the newly established Kew Music Festival. Works performed included Bent Sørensen’s The Deserted Churchyards, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Missa super l’Homme armé and Eight Songs for a Mad King, and the world premiere of Patrick Nunn’s Isochronous.

Matthew Schellhorn’s performances of the music of Olivier Messiaen have been met with superlative critical approval. His acclaimed solo recital at London’s Southbank Centre in 2006 confirmed his status as the pre-eminent Messiaen interpreter of his generation in Britain. Following his performances at the age of twenty of Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus in Cambridge, he was invited in 2002 to perform at the Messiaen International Conference, where Christopher Dingle of BBC Music Magazine described one solo recital as “a cherished memory for those privileged enough to experience it”. The most recent endorsement comes from Messiaen’s wife and dedicatee, who has described Matthew as “an excellent pianist and an excellent exponent”, and has praised his playing as “in every way wonderful … accuracy, rhythm, sonority, technique, emotion … everything is played as Messiaen wished it.” During the 2008 Messiaen centenary, Matthew Schellhorn was involved in numerous performances of Messiaen’s music. In the UK, he was guest soloist in performances of Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine and Turangalîla-Symphonie under Stephen Cleobury and Baldur Brönnimann. He also took part in the “Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije” in France. His new disc with the Soloists of the Philharmonia Orchestra (Messiaen: Chamber Works) is available on Signum Classics.

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