Richard Egarr


Richard Egarr is a British conductor and keyboard player, performing on the harpsichord, fortepiano, organ and modern piano. He is the director of the period instrument orchestra the Academy of Ancient Music. He has been appointed Music Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra based in San Francisco.

Education

He received his early musical training as a choirboy at York Minster and at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester. Later he was an organ scholar at Clare College, Cambridge and studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Study with Gustav Leonhardt further inspired his work in the field of historically informed performance.

Career

Egarr has worked with all types of keyboards and performed repertoire ranging from fifteenth-century organ intabulations to Dussek and Chopin on early pianos, to Berg and Maxwell Davies on modern piano.
In 2006 he was appointed to succeed Christopher Hogwood as Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music with effect from the start of the 2006–07 season. For many years he was director of the Amsterdam-based Academy of the Begijnhof. A regular guest director with such other ensembles as Handel and Haydn Society and Tafelmusik, he plays with various non-period orchestras ranging from the Scottish, Swedish and Australian chamber orchestras to the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, and Dallas Symphony Orchestra. In the operatic field, he has planned to conduct Mozart's La finta giardiniera with the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican Centre and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and Rossini's Il signor Bruschino with the Netherlands Opera Academy.
He made his Glyndebourne debut in 2007 conducting a staged version of Bach's St Matthew Passion. As a chamber musician, according to Gramophone, he formed an "unequalled duo for violin and keyboard" with violinist Andrew Manze.

Discography

He records exclusively for Harmonia Mundi USA, with a discography of over 30 titles. His solo output comprises works by Frescobaldi, Gibbons, Couperin, Purcell, Froberger, Mozart, and J. S. Bach. He has an impressive list of award-winning recordings with Andrew Manze, including sonatas by Bach, Biber, Rebel, Pandolfi, Corelli, Handel, Mozart, and Schubert. With the Academy of Ancient Music he has recorded J. S. Bach's harpsichord concertos and Brandenburg Concertos. In the Handel year 2009 they completed a seven-CD series of Handel discs including the instrumental music Opp.1, 2 and 5, the Concerti grossi Op.3 and the Organ Concertos Op.4 and Op.7.