Born in Dublin in 1958, Hugh Tinney first came to international recognition by winning the First Prize in two international competitions, the 1983 Pozzoli in Italy and the 1984 Paloma O’Shea in Spain. Since then, he has performed in more than 35 countries throughout Europe, the United States, Latin America and the Far East. Festival engagements have taken him to Belgium, the Czech Republic, Spain, Finland, France, Japan, and the USA. Likewise, he has been broadcast on radio or TV in more than 15 countries.

In 1987, he was a prize-winner in the Leeds Piano Competition.  Two years later he made his debut at the BBC ‘Proms’ playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, and there followed a busy career in the U.K., performing with major orchestras such as the London Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Royal Liverpool, the Royal Scottish and the BBC National of Wales.

He has been a regular soloist for forty years with the RTÉ (the Irish national broadcaster) National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, including touring with them in the U.K. in 1993 and performing with them at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1998.  Additionally, he has frequently worked with other Irish orchestras including the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra.

Conductors he has worked with include Simon Rattle, Norman del Mar, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Libor Pešek, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Jacek Kaspryk, Colman Pearce, Bryden Thomson, Proinnsías O’Duinn, Alexander Anissimov, Gerhard Markson, David Brophy, Gavin Maloney, Thierry Fischer, Kenneth Montgomery, and Jaime Martín. He has performed more than sixty different concertos.

Hugh Tinney’s contribution to Irish concert life over the past 35 years has been significant. Highlights include his 1991 Chopin Plus recital series at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin, later repeated in Cork; a second major recital series at IMMA in 1995, focusing on the late sonatas of Schubert. In 1998, he completed a three-year project to perform the complete 21 original Mozart solo piano concertos at Dublin’s National Concert Hall with the Orchestra of St. Cecilia. A complete cycle of the Beethoven concertos followed in 1999.  All of these series received the highest plaudits from Irish critics and audiences.

He played 6 different all-Beethoven sonata recitals at the Royal Dublin Society (2000-02), later completing the cycle of all 32 Beethoven sonatas in other venues. What’s more, he has performed the full Beethoven sonata cycle jointly with Philippe Cassard and Joanna MacGregor at Bantry House in 2004.  In January 2003, he gave a sell-out recital in Dublin’s National Concert Hall as part of the NCH/Irish Times Celebrity Series.  In November 2008, at the invitation of the Royal Dublin Society, he curated and performed in their Chamber Music Weekend to mark the occasion of his 50th birthday.

Chamber music partners have included the Borodin, Tokyo, RTÉ Vanbrugh, RTÉ Con Tempo and Vogler Quartets, Steven Isserlis, Julian Rachlin, Jörg Widmann, Bernadette Greevy, Tara Erraught, Catherine Leonard, John Finucane, Carol McGonnell, Finghin Collins, and John O’Conor.  He played every year from 1997 to 2000, and again in 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2012 at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Bantry.  His interest in contemporary Irish music has led to new works commissioned from Raymond Deane and Ian Wilson.

He premiered Wilson’s Limena in 1999 in an 8-concert tour of Ireland with the Irish Chamber Orchestra.  He was awarded a 2-year bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland to research, perform and record Irish and international contemporary piano music in 2006 and 2007.  In autumn 2010, with assistance from the Arts Council,he commissioned Raymond Deane to write a 40-minute set of 12 pieces, Noctuary; these were premiered in concerts in 2011 and 2013.

Next, in 2010, concerts included Shostakovich and Mozart concerti with the RTÉ NSO, a tour of California with the Camerata Pacifica chamber ensemble, a concert in Cork for the centenary of Aloys Fleischmann’s birth, and the Irish premiere of U.S. composer Morton Feldman’s 90-minute solo piece Triadic Memories (1981) as part of the exhibition “Vertical Thoughts – Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts” at IMMA.

In 2011, Hugh performed his European Piano Masterworks series of three solo recitals at Dublin’s National Concert Hall and elsewhere in Ireland.  In 2012, he toured China with the Academy Chamber Ensemble, and gave recitals in Ireland to celebrate the centenary of John Cage.

The autumn of 2012 included Irish tours with Catherine Leonard, and with the Academy Chamber Ensemble, as well as concerts in Paris and New York. Highlights of the next few years included curating and performing in another European Masterworks series at Dublin’s National Concert Hall in 2013, further tours to China in 2013 and 2014, jointly directing and performing in Westport Festival of Chamber Music from 2013 to 2019, a full cycle of Beethoven’s Violin and Piano Sonatas with Catherine Leonard at the National Concert Hall in 2014, duo and trio chamber tours of Ireland supported by the Arts Council of Ireland in 2014 and 2017, and in 2016 performing and recording in “Composing the Island” – a retrospective festival celebrating 100 years of composition since the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin.

In 2018, in recognition of his 60th Birthday on 28th November, Hugh fulfilled some key celebratory engagements including a 12-stop recital tour of Ireland & Northern Ireland in November, and a performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the RTÉ NSO to a sold-out National Concert Hall (NCH) in Dublin.  2019 included performances of Raymond Deane’s cycle ‘Noctuary’ in Dublin and in Madrid. In late 2019 and early 2020, he curated and played in a 6-concert chamber series at NCH: Beethoven – his Predecessors and Successors, the final concert of which was deferred to the end of that year due to the 2020 pandemic.

Since the pandemic, he performed chamber music concerts, which have been held in Limerick, Westport and Dublin Castle.  In early 2022, Hugh performed Mozart’s great C minor Concerto K. 491 with the National Symphony Orchestra under their Principal Conductor Jaime Martín at the NCH in Dublin. Hugh Tinney’s discography includes a Liszt recital for Decca, Liszt’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses on Meridian, the Mendelssohn Concertos for 2 pianos (with pianist Benjamin Frith) on the Naxos label, the Aloys Fleischmann Piano Quintet (with the RTÉ Vanbrugh quartet) and a collection of Irish songs with Bernadette Greevy, both of these on Marco Polo.

He recorded Raymond Deane’s After-Pieces for solo piano for a CD of Deane’s works on Black Box.  His CD of the piano solo and (with Catherine Leonard) violin/piano duo music of Ian Wilson was released by Riverrun in 2004, and received excellent reviews.  Likewise, Catherine and Hugh’s Beethoven CD (including the “Kreutzer” and “Spring” sonatas) for the RTÉ Lyric FM label has been widely praised since its 2007 release. Ian Wilson’s Limena (with the Belgrade Strings) was released on the Riverrun CD “Sullen Earth” in 2009, and another Ian Wilson work Re:Play (with the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet and others) was released by Riverrun in 2011.

A solo CD “Hugh Tinney – A Portrait”, of works by Bach, Schubert, Debussy, Tom Johnson, and Gerald Barry, was released on the RTÉ Lyric FM label in early 2013. Raymond Deane’s cycle “Noctuary” was released on the world’s first solely digital classics label, Resonus Classics, in June 2014.

From 2000 to 2006, Hugh Tinney was Artistic Director of the Music in Great Irish Houses festival.  From 2013 to 2019, he and Catherine Leonard were joint Artistic Directors of the Westport Festival of Chamber Music. He teaches at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and he has been a jury member at several international piano competitions, including Santander and Dublin.

He has served on the Boards of the Dublin International Piano Competition, and of Opera Theatre Company (a forerunner of the Irish National Opera).  In 2003, he took part as principal pianist in the Sean O’Mordha documentary for RTÉ television, “PIANO – The King of Instruments”.  In September 2007, Hugh was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music by the National University of Ireland.