Pianist, conductor, and percussionist Peter Donohoe gained wide recognition for a silver medal at the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition. He went on to an international career that has involved conducting several small orchestras as well as performances and recordings as a pianist. His large recording catalog includes many albums of British music. Donohoe was born in Manchester, England, on June 18, 1953. He attended the city's prestigious Chetham's School of Music where -- even though he was only 14 -- teachers urged him to audition at the Royal Manchester College of Music. He was accepted and studied with Derek Wyndham. Donohoe went on to the University of Leeds, studying with Alexander Goehr, but returned to the Royal Manchester College of Music and received degrees in piano and percussion there in 1976. For some time, he was active in both fields; he was the percussionist in a performance of Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps conducted by a still-teenaged Simon Rattle, and he appeared on percussion with various British orchestras as well as in rock bands. Finally, he decided to focus on piano, embarking on further study with Yvonne Loriod, Olivier Messiaen, and Charles Rosen, among others. After entering a series of competitions, he took the silver medal at the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Since then, he has had an ongoing bond with Russian audiences. In Britain, Donohoe made debuts at the Purcell Room in London and at Last Night of the Proms in 1979. He has since appeared with major orchestras all over Britain and Ireland, and he was featured at the BBC Proms for 17 years in a row. In 2002, he performed on piano at Rattle's debut performance with the Berlin Philharmonic. Donohoe also launched a conducting career, holding positions with the Northern Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Mill, and the Bath Philharmonia. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010. Donohoe is notable for the size and range of his recording catalog. Beginning with an album of Prokofiev piano sonatas for EMI Classics in 1987, he recorded a number of albums for that label and also for Hyperion, Chandos, and Warner Classics. In the 2000s decade, he was featured on a series of albums of British music on the Naxos label. Donohoe recorded for Somm and Signum Classics in the 2010s, and in 2021, he issued the fourth in a cycle of the piano sonatas of Mozart on Signum Classics.