Sam Haywood has performed to high critical acclaim all over the world as concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. He has recorded extensively for CD, radio and television, most recently with Steven Isserlis for a BBC documentary about Mendelssohn. Next spring he will be touring Europe and the US with Joshua Bell.

Sam began playing the piano at the age of six, inspired by the magic of candlelit evenings listening to crackly Beethoven records with his Grandmother in the English Lake District. His early teachers David Bonser and David Hartigan continued to inspire him and by the age of thirteen he had won 2nd prize in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition (to watch an extract click here). The Royal Philharmonic Society then awarded him their prestigious Isserlis Award, after which he studied in Vienna with Paul Badura-Skoda and spent many a happy evening at the Vienna State Opera. His next major influence was the Italian Schnabel-pupil Maria Curcio, with whom he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

He has given several recitals on Chopin’s own Pleyel piano of 1848, on which he will be making a special recording to celebrate Chopin's anniversary year in 2010. He is also keen to include lesser-known works in his recital programmes. Rosetti (Rosetti Festival, Germany) Elgar (the composer’s own piano version of then Enigma Variations at the Wigmore Hall and Schleswig-Holstein Festival), Mozart’s younger son Franz Xaver (British Embassy, Vienna) and John McLeod (piano sonata commissioned and premiered by Sam Haywood at the Scottish Sound Festival) have recently featured in his programmes. He has also edited a new edition of piano works by Julius Isserlis and Carl Fruehling's Clarinet Trio.

Sam has composed several small-scale works for solo piano and various duos, including the Song of the Penguins, published by Emerson Editions (click here to buy). The director of the film "March of the Penguins", which inspired the piece, wrote: of "The general ambience is one of sadness, yet so much hope and optimism manage to break through. The Song of the Penguins takes us on a journey its own." He is also regularly involved in educational projects and has co-written a children's opera. To celebrate the Chopin anniversary, he recently made a transcription of the Romance from Chopin's First Piano Concerto.

Outside his musical world, he loves to walk in his native Lake District (see Lakes Photo Page) and is a keen amateur magician (see magic page).

Publicity Photos
Click the photographs to download a higher resolution version