Peter Hill

Peter P Hill (born 14 June 1948) is a British pianist and musicologist.

Biography Hill, a native of Sheffield, was awoken to 20th century music when he bought some Schoenberg in a Winchester music shop and "played those Op.19 pieces with a kind of missionary zeal... this taught me about the only real reason for playing music – that you feel passionately about it and want to communicate something"; he later recorded all Schoenberg's piano music for the BBC. He had been a chorister as a child, read music at Oxford then continued his studies at the Royal College of Music, both with Cyril Smith with whom he studied from age of 19, and pursued a research fellowship on Xenakis at Royal Holloway College. He was a founder member of the contemporary music group Dreamtiger. He became a lecturer in the Department of music at Sheffield University in 1976 and was co-director with violinist Peter Cropper of an MA in Music Performance course, alongside undergraduate teaching. As well as playing the complete works of Messiaen, he is also known for his performances of other 20th-century piano repertoire. and a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music.

In November 2013, he gave the world premiere of Messiaen's piano piece La Fauvette passerinette (1961), which he discovered and edited for performance.

Publications

Hill's recordings of Messiaen's piano music, made under the guidance of the composer, for Unicorn-Kanchana, were later available on the Regis label.