Biography
“His sound is lustrous; his playing is lyrical and full of feeling; he thinks not only of the passing notes but of the overall form. Moreover, O’Hora is blessed with meticulous taste - there was not a vulgar, swooning or overstated passage in the program.”
Ronan O'Hora has performed throughout the world, playing with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic and English Chamber orchestras, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Hallé Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Zurich Tonhalle, Netherlands Radio Chamber, Philharmonia Hungarica, Brno Philharmonic, Winnipeg Symphony, Florida Philharmonic and Queensland Philharmonic. He has performed regularly in every major country in Europe as well as in the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore and South Africa working with leading conductors such as Kees Bakels, Matthias Bamert, Hans Vonk, James Judd, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Bramwell Tovey, Hans Vonk, Edo de Waart, Takuo Yuasa and Lothar Zagrosek as well as appearing at many notable music festivals like Salzburg, Gstaad, Ravinia, Montpelier, Bath, Harrogate and Brno. He has broadcast on television and radio throughout the world. Ronan O'Hora has made highly regarded recordings on the Tring International, EMI, Hyperion, Virgin Classics, Dinemic and Fone labels in which he has covered concertos by Mozart, Grieg and Tchaikovsky in addition to solo piano repertoire by Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, Schumann, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Satie plus chamber music by Fauré, Britten, Debussy, Dvorak and Mozart in a discography which extends to over thirty CDs. Reviewed as its Editor's Choice, The Gramophone Magazine wrote " The Grieg Piano Concerto [with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under James Judd] demands imagination and great delicacy of feeling as well as bravura without barnstorming if its eternal freshness is to be caught on record. Ronan O'Hora …… uncannily invests this very beautiful recording with all these virtues, and more besides, for the performance sounds totally spontaneous even on second or third hearings … The cadenza is superb …"
Ronan O'Hora is the Head of Keyboard Studies and Head of Advanced Performance Studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and is a teacher of world renown. Many of his students have been prize winners in international piano competitions. He regularly gives masterclasses all over the world including at the Juilliard School, Yale University, Peabody Institute, Beijing Central Conservatory, Seoul National University, Korean National University of the Arts, Glenn Gould School, Banff Centre and the Orford Music Academy. Ronan O’Hora is Visiting Professor at Tokyo College of Music and Guest Professor at the China Conservatory. He regularly sits on the jury of the world’s foremost international piano competitions, including the Rubinstein, Hamamatsu, Gina Bachauer, Dublin and China International Competitions.