NYT: Christopher Hogwood, Early-Music Devotee, Dies at 73

[Frank Forman]

Christopher Hogwood, Early-Music Devotee, Dies at 73
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/arts/christopher-hogwood-early-music-devotee-dies-at-73.html

By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

Christopher Hogwood, whose Academy of Ancient Music was a key
ensemble in the period-instrument movement, striving to perform
early music as the composer intended and as audiences were first
presumed to have heard it, died on Wednesday at his home in
Cambridge, England. He was 73.

Rebecca Driver, a spokeswoman for the orchestra, said Mr. Hogwood
had been ill for several months but did not specify the cause of
death.

Mr. Hogwood, a conductor, harpsichordist and scholar for whom an
"authentic sound" was paramount, co-founded the Early Music Consort,
which focused on medieval and Renaissance music, in 1967, but the
paucity of information regarding historically accurate performance
styles troubled him. The Academy, which he established in 1973 as
"as a sort of refugee operation for those players of period
instruments who wanted to escape conductors," initially focused on
17- and 18th-century music.

While praised for their buoyancy and stylishness, his
interpretations were also sometimes criticized as dry and
unemotional.

One of the group's significant early achievements was its 1980
recording of Handel's "Messiah," with the soprano Emma Kirkby and
the countertenor James Bowman. Peter G. Davis, writing in The New
York Times, said it was "like no "Messiah" ever heard before in this
century," a performance that embodied the aesthetic championed by
Mr. Hogwood: buoyant playing on gut strings with minimal vibrato.

Mr. Hogwood's more than 200 recordings include the complete Mozart
symphonies and the complete Mozart piano concertos, with the pianist
Robert Levin.

Mr. Hogwood, who early in his career played continuo in Neville
Marriner's Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, was once referred to
as "the Von Karajan of early music"--a reference to Herbert Von
Karajan, who in addition to being one of the 20th century's most
important conductors was a famously imperious personality.

In a phone interview on Thursday, the violinist Pavlo Beznosiuk, a
member of the Academy of Ancient Music since 1984, disagreed; in
fact, he said, "Anyone less like Von Karajan is hard to imagine."
Mr. Hogwood, he added, "was very collaborative and always happy to
defer to the musicians if they had a better idea."

During a concert in 2011 at Alice Tully Hall, where he directed
Juilliard415, the school's period-instrument ensemble, Mr. Hogwood
announced to the audience, "Instead of standing here,
anachronistically waving my arms, I'll join you." He then left the
stage and took a seat in the hall to listen.

Early in his tenure as the artistic director of the Boston-based
Handel and Haydn Society, which lasted from 1986 to 2001, Mr.
Hogwood converted the ensemble to an exclusively period-instrument
group. The Society's major collaborations included a staging of
Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice" with the Mark Morris Dance Company as
well as projects with the jazz pianists Dave Brubeck and Chick
Corea.

Mr. Hogwood had a particular affinity for Mendelssohn and was
scheduled to conduct the composer's "Elijah" in March 2015 with the
Handel and Haydn Society.

In 2008 he became director emeritus of the Academy of Ancient Music,
succeeded by the harpsichordist Richard Egarr.

In addition to period ensembles, Mr. Hogwood led orchestras,
including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony. He
also conducted opera, including Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" at La
Scala in 2006; among the operas he recorded were Handel's
"Agrippina," "Alceste," "Orlando" and "Rinaldo." He also conducted
the works of more modern composers like Stravinsky, Copland and
Tippett.

Mr. Hogwood wrote several books, including a biography of Handel
first published in 1984 and revised in 2007, and prepared many
scholarly editions of scores, which he used for his own
performances, often correcting previously published mistakes.

He held academic positions at the Royal Academy of Music, King's
College London, Cambridge University, Harvard University, Cornell
and Gresham College, London.

Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood was born in Nottingham, England, on
Sept. 10, 1941, the son of Haley and Marion Hogwood. His father was
a physicist, his mother a secretary for the International Labor
Organization. He studied literature and music at Pembroke College,
Cambridge; his harpsichord teachers included Gustav Leonhardt.

Mr. Hogwood is survived by his four younger siblings, Francis,
Charlotte, Kate, and Jeremy.

Some musicians and scholars now believe that modern instruments
allow for greater interpretive possibilities than original
instruments--that the wonders of Bach's music, for example, can be
best illustrated on a modern piano. But according to Mr. Hogwood,
"the theory that Mozart's music was simply awaiting the invention of
the Steinway is wrong."

In a recent interview with The Juilliard Journal, Mr. Hogwood said:
"You can play things stylishly on the wrong instruments or
unstylishly on the right instruments; I hope we'll get it stylish on
the right instruments. It's just clearing the way so that people
hear them as the composer intended, and if he wasn't a complete
idiot, the way he intended is presumably the correct way for them."