Tim Horton is one of the UK’s leading pianists, equally at home in solo and chamber repertoire. He is a founder member of both the Leonore Piano Trio and Ensemble 360 and has been a regular guest pianist with the Nash Ensemble. He was invited to make his solo debut at Wigmore Hall in 2016. Tim returned to Wigmore Hall in early 2021 to perform a programme of Mozart, Chopin and Szymanowski, and presents his complete Chopin Cycle there over the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 seasons.
Between 2011 and 2015 Tim presented a complete Beethoven Sonata cycle at Sheffield’s Crucible Studio for Music in the Round, who asked him to return for a cycle of Schubert Sonatas 2017-2019, and a Chopin cycle which he completed earlier this year. In 2025 he will mark the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death by undertaking a two-piano project with Ivana Gavrić.
Following two performances of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle at Symphony Hall, Birmingham and the Royal Festival Hall, London in 1995, at the recommendation of Alfred Brendel, Tim was asked to give concerts with the RLPO, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra.
With the Leonore Piano Trio, Tim has given concerts throughout the UK, Scandinavia, New Zealand and Europe. They have performed a cycle of the complete Beethoven Trios at King’s Place, London and have repeated the cycle at various venues since then. They have produced seven discs for Hyperion, including the complete Parry Trios and the Piano Quartet with Rachel Roberts. They have also recorded the complete Piano Trios of David Matthews for Toccata Classics and Huw Watkins’ Piano Trios for Resonus.
With Ensemble 360, a mixed group of strings, wind and piano that took up residency at the Crucible Studio in Sheffield in 2005, Tim has performed to great acclaim throughout the UK and abroad. The Ensemble presents an annual nine-day festival in May, in collaboration with Music in the Round. The Ensemble has also recorded discs of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr and Poulenc.
He is also a member of Trio Meister Raro alongside violist Rachel Roberts and clarinettist Robert Plane, performing a selection of acknowledged masterpieces and fascinating curiosities, with a particular focus on themes of storytelling and fantasy.
He has performed regularly at the Aldeburgh, Bath, Elverum, Plush, Presteigne, Midsummer Music and North Norfolk festivals. In 2018 he was invited to curate two weekends of concerts at the Plush Festival in Dorset. The repertoire included music from Gesualdo, through Bach, Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms, to Stockhausen, Kurtag, Boulez and Michael Berkeley performed by the Fieri Consort, The Heath Quartet, Sir Andras Schiff and many close colleagues from the world of chamber music. In the previous two seasons of the same festival Tim worked closely with Oliver Knussen and Sir Harrison Birtwistle.
Tim has performed with many leading chamber musicians including the Elias, Vertavo and Talich Quartets, Paul Lewis, Imogen Cooper, Alasdair Beatson, Bjorg Lewis, Robin Ireland (with whom he has released two discs), Peter Cropper, Adrian Brendel and Rachel Roberts.