Peter watchorn biography

Peter Watchorn (born 30 May 1957) is an Australian-born harpsichordist who has combined a virtuosic keyboard technique, musical scholarship and practical.
Peter Watchorn 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.
Peter Watchorn began his career as harpsichordist in 1974.His considerable gifts as performer were rewarded in 1985 by the conferring of the Erwin Bodky.

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The Australian music director and harpsichordist, Peter Watchorn, comes from a musical family. Since 1974 he has devoted himself to a detailed study of the harpsichord, its history, repertoire and construction, achieving an international reputation for his consistently high standard of performance.

Resident since 1987 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Peter Watchorn has enjoyed an extensive career in both solo and chamber music. In 1985 at the Boston Early Music Festival he was presented with the most prestigious American prize for early music, the Erwin Bodky Award, for his performances of the music of J. S. Bach. From 1985-1992 he studied with the celebrated Viennese harpsichordist, Isolde Ahlgrimm (1914-1995) and has published numerous articles about her life and career, with a full length biography set to appear in 2007 (Ashgate Publishing, London). 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 advi

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Peter Watchorn

Australian-born harpsichordist (born 1957)

Peter Watchorn (born 30 May 1957^[1]) 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 J. S. 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.

Biography

Watchorn first studied early keyboard performance with Margaret Lloyd in his birthplace of Newcastle, Australia, and then

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Peter Watchorn began his career as harpsichordist in 1974.His considerable gifts as performer were rewarded in 1985 by the conferring of the Erwin Bodky Memorial Award, presented by the Cambridge Society forEarly Music in conjunction with the Boston Early Music Festival.

After working with Margaret Lloyd, who nurtured his love for old instruments and music, and Nancy Salas in his native Australia, Peter Watchorn continued his harpsichord studies in Vienna with Isolde Ahlgrimm from 1985 to 1992. He was honored by being named by Ahlgrimm as her “only successor”, and charged with writing her official biography (Isolde Ahlgrimm & Vienna’s Early MusicRevival, Ashgate Publishing, published in 2007), issued in a German translation by Boelau-Verlag, Vienna in 2016. He has written the principal scholarly articles about her life and career, documenting an important chapter of Europe’s revival of early music performance in the twentieth century. Like his teacher, he has devoted himself to a life-long study of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and has performed and recorded muc