User:Tony1/Peter Watchorn draft
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Peter Watchorn (b. 1957) is an Australian-born harpsichordist who has combined a virtuosic keyboard technique, musical scholarship and the construction of harpsichords as copies of original instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries. As well presenting numerous solo public performances and broadcasts of baroque keyboard music, and participating in choral and orchestral performances, he has made five commercial CDs recordings of solo harpsichord music from the 17th and 18th centuries. He specialises in the music of JS Bach, 17th-century French and German music, and the works of the English virginalist composers. He is widely recognised as an expert on the history of the early music revival during the 20th century. His book on the Viennese harpsichordist Isolde Ahlgrimm (1914–95) will be published by Ashgate in late 2007.
He first studied early keyboard performance with Nancy Salas in Sydney during the 1970s. During the 1980s, he performed on harpshichord and chamber organ with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian period-instrument ensemble, the Telemann Trio. During this period, he worked closely with Melbourne instrument-maker, Alastair McAllister, on the design and construction of harpsichords primarily of Australian and New Zealand timber, learning from McAllister advanced techniques of voicing. From 1980, he became the Australian representative for Frank Hubbard Harpsichords of Waltham, Massachusetts, and introduced their instruments to players and institutions throughout the east coast of Australia.
From 1985 to 1992, he studied harpsichord performance in Vienna with Isolde Ahlgrimm, who had played a central role in developing the revival of interest in the use of period instruments for the performance of Baroque and Classical music. He won the Erwin Bodky Award in the Bach section of the 1985 competition in Boston, where he has since resided since joining the staff of Frank Hubbard in Boston in 1987. In 1993, he joined the faculty of the Baroque Performance Institute, held every summer at Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio, as curator of keyboard instruments and adjunct keyboard faculty, where he regularly performed solo and in ensemble. He received his doctorate in 1995 from the University of Boston on The English Suites of JS Bach. He taught harpsichord at Harvard University’s Mather House during the late 1990s. He was a member of ensembles Concerto Armonico Wien (directed by Peter Matzka) and Concerto Armonico (with Owen Watkins, recorder and Geoffrey Burgess, baroque oboe). He continues in his role of continuo keyboardist and artistic advisor to Publick Musick—based in Rochester, NY and directed by Thomas Folan—and codirected the Boston Bach Ensemble with Julian Wachner from 1995 to 2001.
In addition to instruments after French and Flemish originals, he has built Italian harpsichords in conjunction with David Werbeloff in Boston, patterning them after the 1693 Italian in the Smithsonian Institute and the 1697 Grimaldi in Nürnberg, and has collaborated with Sheridan Germann on the design and construction of French instruments. In 1993, he produced the first workshop drawing of the 1642 Moermans double-manual harpsichord in the J. Rodger Mirrey collection in London, a notable early example of the non-transposing Flemish two-manual instrument.
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[edit] Discography
- JS Bach, The Coffee Cantata, with Peter Matzka and Concerto Armonico Wien (1995, Wiener Konzerthaus)
- Johann Sebastian Bach, English Suites BWV 806–811 (recorded October 1997, Titanic)
- JS Bach, Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 (with the Marsh Chapel Choir and the Boston Bach Ensemble, November 1998, Titanic)
- JS Bach, Toccatas BWV 910–916, Edition Bachakademie Vol. 104, (August 1999, Hänssler)
- JS Bach, Keyboard works 1, Box 8 (1999–2000, Hänssler)
- JS Bach, Concerti BWV 972–987, Edition Bachakademie Vol. 111, (February 2000, Hänssler)
- JS Bach, Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord BWV 1014–1019 (with Emlyn Ngai, baroque violin, December 2000 and March 2001, Musica Omnia)
- Bach, Lutheran Massess BWV 233–236' (with Publick Musick, directed by Thomas Folan, November 2004 and June 2005, Musica Omnia)
- JS Bach, 24 Preludes & Fugues BWV 846–869 (harpsichord and pedal harpsichord, October 2005, Musica Omnia)
- JS Bach, Canatas BWV 45, 62, 140 and 192 (with Publick Musick, directed by Thomas Folan, November 2005, Musica Omnia)
