Jeremy Nicholas has been a critic and features writer for Gramophone, the world’s foremost classical music magazine, since 2004 and to International Piano since its inception in 1997. He has been a regular contributor to BBC Music Magazine, Classic CD, Classic FM Magazine, Pianist, International Record Review and many other publications. He has written the booklet notes for nearly 100 CDs, commissioned by every major record label and many independents, including 31 for Hyperion (10 of which have been for their ground-breaking Romantic Piano Concerto series) and stellar artists such as Vladimir Horowitz, Martha Argerich, Sir James Galway and Lang Lang.
Jeremy’s first book Raspberries and Other Trifles – Tales for Discerning Delinquents (pub. Hutchinson, 1984) was a parody of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales. This was followed in 1989 by Godowsky: The Pianists’ Pianist (pub. APR) the first (and still the only) biography of the Polish-American pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938). The book was the result of nearly twenty years research. A revised and updated edition in a German translation was published by Staccato-Verlag in August 2012.
In 1993 Channel 4 commissioned Jeremy to write the book to accompany Harry Enfield’s Guide to Opera, a series which the award-winning comedian presented with Paul Whitehouse. A Beginner’s Guide to Opera (pub. Ebury Press) was the result.
Jeremy’s next two books were commissioned by the UK’s commercial classical music station, Classic FM: The Classic FM Guide to Classical Music (pub. Pavilion Books, 1996) detailed the lives and music of 150 major composers prefaced by a complete history of classical music, an essay which now forms the introduction to the annual Gramophone Classical Music Guide. In 1999 The Classic FM Good Music Guide (pub. Hodder & Stoughton) was an A-Z of background notes on exactly 1,000 works of classical music.
In 2006, Naxos, now the world’s best-selling classical music label, commissioned Jeremy to write a biography of Frédéric Chopin for their series on major composers: Chopin – His Life and Music. The following year, Quercus commissioned The Great Composers, a lavishly illustrated book that formed part of their series of ‘The 50 Greatest’.
Jeremy Nicholas has also edited two books: Victorian Curiosities (pub. Little Brown, 1995, and now available as an ebook from publishers Victorian Secrets) adapted from Don Lemon’s 1890 classic Everybody’s Scrapbook of Curious Facts – A Book for Odd Moments (a kind of Not-Many-People-Know-That collection); and Idle Thoughts on Jerome K. Jerome (pub. JKJ Soc.), a cornucopia of writings about Jerome culled from the pages of Idle Thoughts, the newsletter of the Jerome K Jerome Society of which Jeremy is the President.