Peter Donohoe CBE (born 18 June 1953) is an English classical pianist. Biography Peter Donohoe was born in Manchester, England, and educated at Chetham's School of Music where he studied violin, viola, clarinet and tuba. Donald Clarke recommended that Donohoe do an audition at the age of 14 at the Royal Manchester College of Music, as a result, professor Derek Wyndham insisted on taking him as his youngest student. Donohoe continued to work with Wyndham throughout the rest of his schooldays, and then went on to study music with Alexander Goehr at the University of Leeds. Later he returned to Manchester to continue working at the Royal Northern College of Music with Professor Wyndham, graduating in 1976 as BMus with first class honours in both piano and percussion as both teacher and performer. In 1975 he had been engaged for a trial as timpanist with the BBC Philharmonic, which was the high point in a career in percussion playing that included the formation of a rock group, a percussion ensemble and involvement in many opera and symphonic performances across the UK as both first-call free-lance percussionist and regular extra with many major British symphony orchestras. Later this led to becoming first call extra keyboard player with the BBC Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Hallé. During his student years he also studied percussion playing with Jack Gledhill – then timpanist with the Hallé – and Gilbert Webster, who had been Principal Percussionist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who encouraged his exploration of other disciplines, including the cimbalom, jazz improvisation on the vibraphone, and rock drumming. However, during his final year as an undergraduate he decided to put all his energies into the piano. After graduating, he spent one year studying with Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen in Paris. During his student years at the Royal Northern College of Music he had also studied with Vlado Perlemuter, Sir William Glock, Roger Woodward, Charles Rosen and Sequeira Costa. In 1974 and 1975 he attended the Bartók Seminar in Budapest, where he studied with Pál Kadosa and first met his long-term colleague, Zoltán Kocsis. In 1976 Donohoe entered his first two competitions. The first was the British Liszt Competition in Guildford, England, in which he took third prize. Secondly he entered the Bartók-Liszt Competition in Budapest, Hungary, winning the Special Prize for his performance of Bartók.