The Australian pianist Roger Woodward performs both traditional and contemporary repertoire. He is also a conductor and composer whose musical training is steeped in church music and the romantic repertory. He rose to international prominence in prestigious collaborations with Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Toru Takemitsu, Franco Donatoni, Leo Brouwer, Iannis Xenakis, Arvo Pärt, Larry Sitsky and worked with such contemporary German composers as Peter Michael Hamel, Rolf Gehlhaar and Hans Otte. Such collaborations were recorded by the ABC, BBC, French and German Radio and Television and by the EMI, Decca and RCA recording companies, to launch a major career as soloist with orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, five London orchestras, Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Cleveland orchestra under such distinguished conductors as Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, and Kurt Masur, et al.
As a chamber musician he is the frequent partner of the Alexander String Quartet, with whom he performed the piano quintets of Brahms, Schumann, Dvorak and Shostakovich in New York and San Francisco. Their recording of the Shostakovich Piano Quintet for the Foghorn label received brilliant reviews as did their recent recording for Celestial Harmonies of the Chopin F-minor Concerto and C-major Beethoven Piano Quartet WoO 36. At the invitation of the late Sviatoslav Richter he performed with the Arditti String Quartet at La Grange de Meslay, Tours, and he has frequently performed at Le festival d’automne à Paris and BBC Proms. In 2009, he premiered Of the Sound of Life (a sixty- five-minute collection of twelve etudes) by the contemporary German composer Peter Michael Hamel, at the Gasteig, Munich. His recording of this work for Celestial Harmonies was greeted enthusiastically by the German critics as was his recording of Hans Otte’s Book of Hours and Rolf Gehlhaar’s Diagonal Flying.
He was awarded Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for his Celestial Harmonies recording of Bach C-minor and E-minor Partitas, and is a recipient of the Goethe Prize and Diapaison d’or by German and French critics for recordings of works dedicated to him by Morton Feldman. Current recordings for Celestial Harmonies include the Chopin Nocturnes and Debussy Préludes, released to reviews that described Roger Woodward’s performances as eclipsing those of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Bach’s forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of Das Wohltemperierte Clavier was Editor’s Choice in the February, 2010 Gramophone and the release has received outstanding reviews worldwide. Further recordings will be issued in 2010 with music by early twentieth-century Russian composers as well as recordings of music by Jean Barraqué and Iannis Xenakis. His live recording with Claudio Abbado for DGG, from the Wienerkonzerthaus received very high praise.
Resident in San Francisco, he is recipient of the Polish Order of Merit, the British OBE, Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and is a Companion of the Order of Australia.