EMS "Early Music Today" 9/2/2025

[AuntDaisy]

EMS "Early Music Today", 5pm 9th February 2025.
I hadn't realised that Colin Tilney had died, sad news.

Early Music Today
The Early Music Show

Presenter Hannah French talks to Sir Simon Rattle on his recent 70th birthday about his knowledge and passion for early music, given his long association with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

She also chats to internationally renowned recorder player Lucie Horsch ahead of her recent work on the Frans Brüggen Project - an album to mark what would have been Brüggen's 90th birthday last year. With help from Brüggen’s widow and daughter, Lucie was able to play and record repertoire on 14 of the precious historic recorders from from the Golden Age of recorder making (1680s to 1740s) that are part of Brüggen's personal collection.

Hannah also pays tribute to harpsichordist Colin Tilney - a stalwart of the late 20th Century early music scene, who died in December; and to Claire van Kampen - composer, arranger, musical director, playwright and artistic advisor at Shakespeare's Globe, who passed away last month.

Plus Hannah will have all the latest Early Music news, looking forward to next month's REMA International Day of Early Music and the forthcoming new release of music by Palestrina in his 500th anniversary year by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027k78

[oddoneout]

I had missed Colin Tilney's death a well. In the course of following that up I came across this.

https://www.semibrevity.com/2012/02/the-forgotten-harpsichord-teacher-of-christopher-hogwood-colin-tilney/

[AuntDaisy]

I had missed Colin Tilney's death a well. In the course of following that up I came across this.
https://www.semibrevity.com/2012/02/...-colin-tilney/

Thanks oddoneout, an interesting read & listen.


The Telegraph obituary (behind a paywall, but visible if you're quick with the cancel button) mentions her:

He read Music and Modern Languages at King’s College, Cambridge, taking harpsichord lessons with Thurston Dart and Mary Potts, a pupil of Arnold Dolmetsch who played a key role in the revival of the instrument. He also studied in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt.

It's headed by an unexpected subtitle...

Colin Tilney, virtuoso harpsichordist who expanded the instrument’s repertoire
A highlight of his career was ‘delighting my partner on our first meeting by playing him Scarlatti in the nude’

Colin Tilney, who has died aged 91, was a bearded English harpsichordist who delighted concert audiences with his virtuoso performances; he was, however, lost to Canada 45 years ago when he took up a teaching position at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

Although the harpsichord is often associated with early music, Tilney was keen to put the instrument through its modern paces, commissioning works by Elisabeth Lutyens of Britain, Priaulx Rainier of South Africa and several Canadian composers. He was also the harpsichordist for Igor Stravinsky on a 1964 Columbia recording of The Rake’s Progress and in 1965 gave the first London performance of Hans Werner Henze’s Lucy Escott Variations.

Tilney sought out and played 18th-century harpsichords. “I particularly like recording on the old ones,” he said, referring to a career in the studio that dated back to the late 1950s. “Some museums simply do not allow their instruments to be played, but if you have the backing of a good company, then it can be much easier… a museum can sell those records right where people can see the harpsichord they were made on.”
...