Peter Watchorn (born 1957) is an Australian-born harpsichordist who has combined a virtuosic keyboard technique, musical scholarship and practical experience in the construction of harpsichords copied from original instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries. As well as presenting many solo public performances and broadcasts of baroque keyboard music and participating in choral and orchestral performances, he has made numerous commercial CD 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 biography of the Viennese harpsichordist Isolde Ahlgrimm (1914–95) was published by Ashgate in December, 2007.
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He first studied early keyboard performance with Margaret Lloyd in Newcastle, Australia, and then with Nancy Salas in Sydney during the 1970s. With Nancy Salas, he presented a series of 12 joint lecture-recitals on the second book of JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. During the 1980s, he performed on harpsichord and chamber organ with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian period-instrument ensemble, the Telemann Trio (with Owen Watkins, recorder and Margaret Waugh, cello). During this period, he worked closely with Melbourne instrument-maker, Alastair McAllister on harpsichord design and construction, learning from McAllister advanced techniques of voicing, action set-up and the theory of harpsichord scaling and geometry. 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. In 1985, he won the Erwin Bodky Award in the Bach section of the early-music performance competition in Boston.[1] He has made Boston his base since joining the staff of Frank Hubbard in that city 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 the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1995 from Boston University with his dissertation A Performer's Guide to 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 co-directed the Boston Bach Ensemble with Julian Wachner,[2] from 1995 to 2001.
In addition to instruments after French and Flemish originals, he has collaborated in the design and construction of Italian harpsichords with David Werbeloff in Boston, patterning them after the 1693 Italian (Giusti) in the Smithsonian Institution and the 1697 Grimaldi in Nürnberg, and has worked with the Boston-based painter and historian Sheridan Germann in production of both Flemish and French instruments. In 1993, he produced the first workshop drawing of the 1642 Hans Moermans (II)double-manual harpsichord in the J. Rodger Mirrey collection in London, a notable early example of the non-transposing Flemish two-manual instrument. The first modern copy was constructed by Zuckermann Harpsichords International in 2007, and is now housed at Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio, US.[1]
Peter Watchorn is co-founder (with David Fox) of the award-winning CD label Musica Omnia. He has served as executive producer for numerous releases by artists such as Max van Egmond, The Atlantis Trio & Ensemble (with Jaap Schroeder, Enid Sutherland and Penelope Crawford), Emlyn Ngai, Saskia Coolen, Sally Pinkas, Mahan Esfahani, Publick Musick, Magnificat Ensemble and The Adaskin String Trio. With Emlyn Ngai he recorded (for Musica Omnia) JS Bach's six sonatas for violin and harpsichord. In 2008 he was appointed to the faculty of Boston College and for the past two years has taught a Music of the Baroque class.