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PREVIEW: Hendrik Bouman Harpsichord Recital: Holywell Music Room (from Oxford Mail)
A recital at Holywell Music Room tonight, to commemorate the birthday of Philip Bate (he of the eponymous instrument collection), will feature Dutch composer and early keyboard player Hendrik Bouman performing, on a self-builtharpsichordist, works by J.S.Bach, Biber and three of his own pieces in the baroque idiom. Joining him in the English premiere of Bouman's Fantasy for Violin in G major and Sonata for Violin and obbligato Haprishord in D major will be Simon Standage, on a 1685 violin by Giovanni Granciino.
Bouman, who was harpsichordist at Musica Antiqua-Köln, and founder-director of the period orchestra Les Nations de Montrêal and of Haydn Heritage, Concerto Felice and Baroque SaMuse, moved to Old Kidlington last year with his wife Anna and their chidren. Orignally from Dordrecht, he learned piano as a youngster, and in his teens enjoyed the concerts of the Rotterdam Sumphony.
"I had a liking for piano improvisation and tried to reconstruct, by ear, extracts from orchestral works" he says: "I was around 15 when I woke up to the baroque. I discovered the harpsichord during Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and came to love its repertoire, its continuo function - allowing me to play ensemble, its size - transportable, and its hands-on feeling: the tuning and tinkering' as Anna calls it."
While studying at the Amsterdam Conservatory, Bouman met Norwegian harpscordist Kethil Haugsand, who performed on an instrument he had made himself. "with useful hints from him, the acquaintance of a few Dutch builders, the experience of playing on historic instruments in Antwerp and Paris, and armed with Three Centuries of Harpsichord Building by Frank Hubbard, I built in my one-room student's apartment a copy of a smiall harpsichord by Pisaurensis." He has since made gthree other instruments, including the double manual harpsichord he will use tonight.
Of the composition and improvisation in the styles of the 17th and 18th century Europe for which he is renowned, he says "The rigid mind-set surrounding classical music culture, based on task division and a veneragted canon of repertoire, can obscure the original naturalness of musicanship - chords, scales and forms are the the exclsive property of composers who had juggled them into works of art; and style is not necessaerily locked up in a period in time."
The concert is at 8pm. Tickets: Oxford Playhouse or on the door=Swis 721 B
by Julie Webb