Throughout her sixty-eight year career as a concert pianist, Dame Moura Lympany has appeared at all of the most important music centres and with many of the world's finest orchestras and conductors.

Born in Cornwall in August 1916, Moura Lympany made her début at the age of twelve playing Mendelssohn's G minor Concerto in Harrogate, England. At thirteen, she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music and in 1932, when she was only fifteen, she had already won several prizes and gold medals. In the same year, she appeared at the Queen's Hall playing the Grieg Concerto under Sir Henry Wood with whom she was to make her Promenade Concerts debut five years later. At the age of eighteen, Dame Moura played at the Wigmore Hall in London for the first time.

After studying with Paul Weingarten in Vienna, Dame Moura continued her studies under Mathilde Verne (who had taught Solomon and had herself been a pupil of Clara Schumann) and then with Tobias Matthay. In 1938, as one of the youngest of seventy-eight entrants in the Ysaye Competition in Brussels, she was the surprise second prize-winner to the fiery young Russian, Emil Gilels.

Dame Moura gave the first performance outside Russia of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto and she later performed the Concerto under the composer himself at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She was the first Western pianist to visit the Soviet Union after the War.

Dame Moura has made more than fifty records. She was the first pianist to record the complete Rachmaninov Preludes (on nine 78's) during the composer's lifetime and she has since recorded many solo and concerto discs. (Her interpretations of Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Saint-Saens concertos are currently available on the Olympia label.) Her two most recent recordings for EMI of Best-loved Classics have sold well in excess of 150,000 copies worldwide.

Dame Moura's most recent recordings have included two new discs for Erato - the complete Rachmaninov Preludes and Chopin Preludes and Etudes, as well as a Debussy recital disc for EMI. EMI has also re-issued on CD Dame Moura's famous recordings of Mendelssohn, Franck and Litolff works for piano and orchestra.

Throughout her career, Dame Moura has refused to specialise and has more than sixty concertos in her repertoire. She has always been a significant and staunch champion of British composers including Richard Arnell, Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius, John Ireland, Alan Rawsthorne, Cyril Scott and Malcolm Williamson and she has premiered their works all over the world.

Dame Moura's engagements in recent seasons have included concerts with the New Japan Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Philharmonia, the London Symphony with Michael Tilson-Thomas in their Mahler Festival, and the BBC Symphony (at her sixtieth appearance at the Proms). She also has given recitals in Boston, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Osaka, London, Manchester, Rome, Vienna, La Roque d'Anthéron, Toulouse, Valencia and Valldemosa.

In 1992 Moura Lympany was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire by Her Majesty The Queen in recognition of her services to music. In the same year Dame Moura was also honoured with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Government and in 1995 was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in London.

Dame Moura's autobiography was published in 1991 by Peter Owen Publishers.