Christopher Hogwood was born in 1941 in Nottingham, where he attended high school before attending The Skinners’ School, Royal Tunbridge Wells and then winning a place at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge where he read Classics and Music. Christopher Hogwood then spent a year of postgraduate study in Prague. In 1964, he joined the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields and co-founded, with David Munrow, the Early Music Consort and in 1973 he founded the Academy of Ancient Music, an orchestra which became a prime mover in the early music movement to promote the performance of baroque and early music on period instruments.
Christopher Hogwood made his operatic debut in 1983, conducting Don Giovanni in the United States of America. He conducted an impressive amount of opera all over the world, with the Berlin State Opera, La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera Stockholm, Opera Australia or the Teatro Real in Madrid among others. From 1986 to 2001, he was artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival based at London’s Barbican Centre and from 1988 to 1992 he was musical director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota.
Christopher Hogwood was a leading light in the movement to address musical interpretation along “historically-informed" performance practice lines. He was also a leader in making less formal concert presentations being one of the first musicians in Britain to address the audience during concerts. He was renowned for his concise, accessible and engaging delivery of his knowledge of music while never losing his reputation for an intellectual rigour and precision. This clarity of articulation included radio and TV broadcasts, notably on The Young Idea on BBC Radio 3 which he presented for 12 years.
His recordings have been immensely popular and in 1985 his LP of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was vying with Prince’s Purple Rain in the pop charts. Appointed as principal guest conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Christopher Hogwood championed genre variety and his programmes involved jazz ballets by Bohuslav Martinů, suites by Bizet, concertos by Stravinsky among recordings of Haydn, Purcell and Schubert. He had made the early movement so mainstream that soon his carefully-curated programmes were admitted in the Royal Opera House, including a sold-out run of Haydn’s L’Anima del Filosofo, starring Cecilia Bartoli, in 2001. According to the Lincoln Center in New York, there was “never an unsold seat for a Hogwood programme”.
One of his most famous recordings, the 1980 version of Handel’s Messiah with Dame Emma Kirkby and Carolyn Watkinson, was named one of the top 20 recordings of all time by BBC Music Magazine.
An eminent keyboardist and passionate collector of historical instruments, Christopher Hogwood promoted the clavichord with fervour and made various solo recordings on harpsichord. His Secret Handel was awarded a Diapason d’Or in 2007.
Christopher Hogwood was not only a world-renowned conductor, but also a writer, a keyboard player, a broadcaster and a noted musicologist who edited music from the 16th to the 20th centuries, including works by Igor Stravinsky, Edward Elgar and Felix Mendelssohn.
Christopher Hogwood’s final major book, Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks was part of a larger work on the German composer, which brought him numerous awards, including the Halle Handel Prize in 2008.
In 2006 Christopher Hogwood handed over the baton of the Academy of Ancient Music to harpsichordist Richard Egarr, assuming from then on the title of Emeritus Director. In 2008 he received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Cambridge. He was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1982 and Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989
Christopher Hogwood died in September 2014. Dame Emma Kirkby said about him: "Some of the best players that now lead orchestras all over the world, they started with him."
Christopher Hogwood made his operatic debut in 1983, conducting Don Giovanni in the United States of America. He conducted an impressive amount of opera all over the world, with the Berlin State Opera, La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera Stockholm, Opera Australia or the Teatro Real in Madrid among others. From 1986 to 2001, he was artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival based at London’s Barbican Centre and from 1988 to 1992 he was musical director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota.
Christopher Hogwood was a leading light in the movement to address musical interpretation along “historically-informed" performance practice lines. He was also a leader in making less formal concert presentations being one of the first musicians in Britain to address the audience during concerts. He was renowned for his concise, accessible and engaging delivery of his knowledge of music while never losing his reputation for an intellectual rigour and precision. This clarity of articulation included radio and TV broadcasts, notably on The Young Idea on BBC Radio 3 which he presented for 12 years.
His recordings have been immensely popular and in 1985 his LP of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was vying with Prince’s Purple Rain in the pop charts. Appointed as principal guest conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Christopher Hogwood championed genre variety and his programmes involved jazz ballets by Bohuslav Martinů, suites by Bizet, concertos by Stravinsky among recordings of Haydn, Purcell and Schubert. He had made the early movement so mainstream that soon his carefully-curated programmes were admitted in the Royal Opera House, including a sold-out run of Haydn’s L’Anima del Filosofo, starring Cecilia Bartoli, in 2001. According to the Lincoln Center in New York, there was “never an unsold seat for a Hogwood programme”.
One of his most famous recordings, the 1980 version of Handel’s Messiah with Dame Emma Kirkby and Carolyn Watkinson, was named one of the top 20 recordings of all time by BBC Music Magazine.
An eminent keyboardist and passionate collector of historical instruments, Christopher Hogwood promoted the clavichord with fervour and made various solo recordings on harpsichord. His Secret Handel was awarded a Diapason d’Or in 2007.
Christopher Hogwood was not only a world-renowned conductor, but also a writer, a keyboard player, a broadcaster and a noted musicologist who edited music from the 16th to the 20th centuries, including works by Igor Stravinsky, Edward Elgar and Felix Mendelssohn.
Christopher Hogwood’s final major book, Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks was part of a larger work on the German composer, which brought him numerous awards, including the Halle Handel Prize in 2008.
In 2006 Christopher Hogwood handed over the baton of the Academy of Ancient Music to harpsichordist Richard Egarr, assuming from then on the title of Emeritus Director. In 2008 he received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Cambridge. He was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1982 and Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989
Christopher Hogwood died in September 2014. Dame Emma Kirkby said about him: "Some of the best players that now lead orchestras all over the world, they started with him."
"I eventually discovered Hogwood’s Messiah: it seemed to blow cobwebs away from my ears and mind, as if I was grasping the most essential qualities of Handel’s oratorio properly for the first time. I was astonished by its vitality, insightfulness, freely flowing pace, and the elegant radicalism of Hogwood’s striving for a historically informed Handelian style. To my mind, it still has that immediacy and freshness today." (David Vickers for Gramophone, April 2015)
Tim Smithies, the producer of the two recordings he made on Metronome writes: "Christopher Hogwood was charming but rigorous to work with while recording. I had been involved with him on many live performances at the Early Music Centre and Network where he was a regular performer. We took great pains to record the original instruments featured in the Secret Handel and the Secret Bach, abandoning sessions in Clare College Cambridge because of extraneous noises interfering with the pianissimos of the clavichords. Bearing in mind his experience in making large number of recordings which could have been intimidating for a producer, he came with a completely open mind to these recording sessions, amazingly well prepared and which were a delight to undertake with him. He was scrupulous about the need for evidence in performance practice and would kindly pull me up when enthusiasm brought on a gloss too far! His service to music in the latter part of the 20th century was wide-ranging and inspiring".
Tim Smithies, the producer of the two recordings he made on Metronome writes: "Christopher Hogwood was charming but rigorous to work with while recording. I had been involved with him on many live performances at the Early Music Centre and Network where he was a regular performer. We took great pains to record the original instruments featured in the Secret Handel and the Secret Bach, abandoning sessions in Clare College Cambridge because of extraneous noises interfering with the pianissimos of the clavichords. Bearing in mind his experience in making large number of recordings which could have been intimidating for a producer, he came with a completely open mind to these recording sessions, amazingly well prepared and which were a delight to undertake with him. He was scrupulous about the need for evidence in performance practice and would kindly pull me up when enthusiasm brought on a gloss too far! His service to music in the latter part of the 20th century was wide-ranging and inspiring".