Martin Jones

Pianist Martin Jones had been among the most versatile and prolific players on the current scene. He has specialized in, but not restricted himself to, British, Spanish, and Eastern European music. Jones was born on February 4, 1940, in Witney in England's Oxfordshire region. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where his teachers were Guido Agosti, Guy Jonson, and Gordon Green. Early recognition came in the form of the Dame Myra Hess Award in 1968. That year, he made prestigious debuts at London's Southbank Centre and Carnegie Hall in New York. Those appearances led to concerto performances, both in Britain and abroad, as far afield as Australia, where he played the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. His concerto performances have included such difficult virtuoso works as the Piano Concerto of Ferruccio Busoni. He also made appearances on BBC Radio 3, Brussels Radio, RTE in Dublin, and ABC in Australia. Jones spent much of the first part of his career as pianist-in-residence at Britain's Cardiff University, beginning in 1971 and remaining until 1983. In 1987, he made the first recording in what would become a long-lasting association with the Nimbus label, an album of Mendelssohn Piano Sonatas. In 1993, Jones gave a Brahms recital at London's Wigmore Hall. Jones' Nimbus catalog has grown to encompass well over 50 recordings, including complete cycles of the keyboard music of Debussy, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Brahms, Percy Grainger, Erich Korngold, and the elusive Federico Mompou. His recorded output has centered largely on solo piano music, as opposed to concertos, but for many listeners, he may be most familiar, if not most recognized, for his performances on the soundtrack of the film Howard's End. Jones has revived the music of composer Carlos Guastavino (1914-2000), and he has especially championed modern music of the British Isles, such as that of composer/pianist Alan Richardson, to whom he devoted a five-disc album in 2019. Unlike most of his other releases, this appeared on the Lyrita label. Jones continued to record through the COVID-19 pandemic for Nimbus, Lyrita, and Resonus Classics, issuing a pair of albums devoted to the music of serialist Elisabeth Lutyens on the latter. In 2023, Jones released an album of piano-and-orchestra music by Lutyens, Errollyn Wallen, and Elizabeth Maconchy with the BBC Concert Orchestra on Resonus Classics. By that time, his recording catalog comprised more than 80 recordings. ~ James Manheim, Rovi