On 29 August 2010, at the Presteigne Festival on the Welsh borders, John McCabe gave his last public piano recital, bringing to an end a career as solo pianist that had lasted half a century. McCabe — born in Liverpool in 1939 and a composer-pianist in the tradition of Beethoven and Rachmaninov — has always championed the music of his contemporaries alongside his own and that of the masters of the past, and this farewell recital included two works by friends and colleagues and his own grandiose Tenebrae.

John McCabe, piano