Craig Sheppard, piano

Craig Sheppard, the Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professor of Piano, came to the UW School of Music in 1993. He has made six trips to the Far East to teach and perform since mid-2002 — four to Japan and one each to Taiwan and Korea. In March of 2008, he visits New Zealand for the second time, performing Book II of The Well Tempered Clavier at Victoria University in Wellington. In May, 2008, he goes to China for three weeks, giving solo recitals and master classes in four major cities (including Shanghai and Beijing).

In May 2004, Sheppard completed a seven-concert series in the University of Washington's Meany Theater devoted to a chronological traversal of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. Entitled Beethoven: A Journey, the cycle is available in a nine-CD boxed set through Sheppard's Web site, www.craigsheppard.net, as well as from Romeo Records www.romeorecords.com and major record stores. More recently, his recordings of Bach’s Six Keyboard Partitas, the Inventions and Sinfonias (Aufrichtige Anleitung), and Book I of The Well Tempered Clavier, all recorded live in Meany Theater, have been released on Romeo Records. The Beethoven cycle and all three Bach discs have met with unanimous praise in local, national, and international publications, including Gramophone, International Piano, International Record Review and Fanfare.

In 1996, Sheppard opened the Seattle Symphony's season as soloist in a series of concerts that also featured the violinist Midori. In 1999, he made his recital debut at the Berlin Philharmonic to great critical acclaim. Die Welt remarked: “ The pianist revealed himself as an intimate connoisseur of Bach’s soul, illuminating every facet of the thirty-two Goldberg Variations, constructing an inner line full of tension, playing however at the same time with complete naturalness and ease.”

A graduate of both the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in New York City, Sheppard’s teachers included Rudolf Serkin, Sir Clifford Curzon, Eleanor Sokoloff, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Peter Feuchtwanger, and Ilona Kabos.

Following his New York debut in 1972, Sheppard won the silver medal at the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in England. Moving there in 1973, he quickly established himself through recording and frequent appearances on BBC radio and television as one of the preeminent pianists of his generation. Cycles of the complete solo piano works of Johannes Brahms and Bach's Klavierübung in London and other major capitals solidified his reputation as a probing and dynamic artist.

During his twenty years in England, Sheppard taught at the University of Lancaster, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the Yehudi Menuhin School for gifted children. He also gave frequent master classes at both Oxford and Cambridge universities.

Sheppard has performed with all of the major orchestras in Great Britain, as well as those of Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, among others, and with such conductors as Sir Georg Solti, Sir Charles Mackerras, James Levine, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Erich Leinsdorf, Aaron Copland, David Zinman, Gerard Schwarz, and Peter Erös.

Sheppard has recorded on the EMI, Polygram (Philips), Sony, Chandos, Cirrus, and Tangermann/Berlin (at-label@gmx.de) labels.

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