The Piano in Beethoven's Chamber Music

Donat's vast expertise provides unique insight into the history and genesis of key works in the chamber music repertoire.

MISHA DONAT has composed music for the theatre and the cinema, including films directed by Lindsay Anderson and by Albert Finney. For more than 25 years he was a senior producer at BBC Radio 3, where he worked with many of the world's leading musicians. He has contributed many programme notes to such venues as London's Wigmore Hall and South Bank, as well as for festivals including Aldeburgh, Edinburgh and Brighton. He has written CD booklets for Decca, DG, RCA, Philips, Hyperion and other labels, and his articles have appeared in The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Musical Times, and elsewhere. He has taught at the University of California in Los Angeles, and has given lectures, seminars and preconcert talks at Vassar and Bard Colleges in New York State, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore); and in the UK, at Aldeburgh, the Dartington Summer School of Music (where he has also coached chamber music) and Durham University. For several years he worked as a producer for the Philharmonia Orchestra, where his recordings included a Mahler and Schoenberg series with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Brahms and Schumann cycles with Christoph von Dohnányi, and a Mahler symphonies cycle with Lorin Maazel. From 2017-24 he was Artistic Director of Norwich Chamber Music, and in recent years he has provided the introductory texts for Jonathan Del Mar's new editions of the Beethoven piano sonatas, piano trios and late string quartets published by Bärenreiter.