Graeme McNaught studied in Glasgow, Munich and Salzburg before completing his studies with the renowned Italian pianist and teacher Maria Curcio in London.
His busy and particularly varied concert career was established when, in 1986, he was the unanimous winner of the first ever Scottish Piano Competition. There followed numerous solo recitals as well as concerto engagements with all of the country's orchestras.
A keen interest in the work of living composers and his association with the award-winning Chamber Group of Scotland resulted in performances and broadcasts of new music and many collaborative projects at home and abroad.
He has partnered distinguished musicians in Lieder and chamber music including Willard White, Lynn Harrell and Ruggiero Ricci, with whom he recorded works from Sarasate to Beethoven. He has been a regular guest with such groups as the Hebrides Ensemble, the ever eclectic Mr McFall's Chamber and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in its various guises.
Commercial recordings range from MacMillan with the SCO for the BIS label to sonatas by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich, with cellist Robert Irvine, for Delphian.
Graeme's teaching career is no less diverse. He has taught in Germany, Romania, Switzerland and South Korea and since 1990 as Lecturer in Keyboard Studies at the RSAMD, now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Both his playing and teaching draw influence from shape, colour, speech and the written word and from the fusion and confusion of art forms. His work explores and challenges the supposed and accepted boundaries and connections of the creative mind.
His understanding and sensitivity to the emotional levels within the cycle (Schumann’s Carnaval,
opus 9) was thoroughly convincing, drawing one’s attention to the music and not its execution.
The Herald
His extraordinary ability to empathise and his differentiated palette of sound assure him a place among the most highly qualified interpreters on the piano.
Badische Neueste Nachrichten
For sheer exuberance and joie de vivre Graeme McNaught’s brilliant performance of Ravel’s G Major Concerto set the celebratory tone of the evening.
The Herald
A fine ensemble pianist, passionately involved in each note he played.
The Herald
McNaught had fire, passion and poetry, as well as a flash of spontaneity in his account of the Schumann (Concerto). He had an intensity of expression and a clarity of structural insight which informed his performance at every level.
The Herald
McNaught succeeded in transcending that level where one can stick convenient labels of description. (He) took the music way beyond printed notes and instructions into almost spiritual realms.
The Herald
A master of the keys.
Scwäbische Zeitung
McNaught’s solo traversal of the Enigma Variations was masterful...Nimrod was noble, yet unsentimental, and his Finale wonderfully sonorous.
The Scotsman
A musician of authority and imagination.
The Guardian