| Biography | Margaret Fingerhut (born 30 March 1955) is a British classical pianist. A fascination with exploring lesser-known repertoire is reflected in eclectic recital programmes and also in her recordings. She teaches at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Birmingham Conservatoire.
Fingerhut attended North London Collegiate School. She studied at the Royal College of Music with Cyril Smith and Angus Morrison, and afterwards with Vlado Perlemuter in Paris and Leon Fleisher and Adele Marcus in the USA.
She was selected as a Young Musician of the Year by the Greater London Arts Association in 1981. She made her London debut at the Wigmore Hall in the same year, and first played in the Royal Festival Hall in 1983. She has since given recitals in many different European countries, the USA, Canada, India, Turkey, Israel and Africa. As a concerto soloist she has appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the London Mozart Players, in venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican. She appeared in Testimony, Tony Palmers film about Shostakovich.
Her discs on the Chandos label include works by Bainton, Bax, Berkeley, Bloch, Dukas, Falla, Grieg, Howells, Leighton, Moeran, Novák, Stanford, Suk and Tansman. Two of her Bax recordings - the Octet with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble and the Concertante for Piano Left Hand and Orchestra with Vernon Handley and the BBC Philharmonic - were short-listed for Gramophone awards. Her disc of solo piano music by Alexandre Tansman was picked as a "Diapason DOr" in Diapason magazine. She was also the soloist in the world première recording of Percy Youngs arrangement of Elgars sketches for his Piano Concerto slow movement, with the Munich Symphony Orchestra conducted by Douglas Bostock.
Fingerhut formerly taught piano at the Royal Northern College of Music and is currently Professor of Piano at Trinity Laban Conservatoire as well as a Visiting Tutor at Birmingham Conservatoire. She has given many masterclasses in the UK, including Dartington International Summer School, Chethams International Summer School for Pianists and Birmingham International Piano Academy. Her teaching at Dartington was described by The Spectator magazine as demonstrating "enormous skill and sympathy". She has given masterclasses in the USA, Canada and China, and has been on the jury of competitions such as the BBC Young Musician of the Year.
She has written articles for magazines such as Classical Music, Pianist and Piano Professional |