Richard Egarr

Keyboardist and conductor Richard Egarr has been a figure of unusual versatility on the early music scene. He plays keyboards of various kinds, concentrating on the harpsichord, and has conducted both early music ensembles and modern symphony orchestras. Egarr was born on August 7, 1963, in Lincoln in England’s East Midlands. His first musical training came as a chorister at York Minster Cathedral, and he went on to study piano and organ at Chetham’s School of Music. After earning his diploma as an organist at 16, Egarr became an organ scholar at Manchester Cathedral and then at Clare College, Oxford. He also took harpsichord courses at Oxford and earned his degree as a harpsichordist in 1986. Egarr went on for further studies with David Roblou at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then for private lessons in Amsterdam with the famed harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt. In 1991, he made his recording debut as a harpsichordist, releasing an album of music by Frescobaldi on the Globe Records label. Beginning in 1994, he made one of the few recording cycles of the complete keyboard works of Johann Jakob Froberger. Egarr landed a position as harpsichordist of the London Baroque ensemble and then, in 1995, became director of Amsterdam’s Academy of the Begijnhof. Beginning in the late ’90s, he often conducted London’s Hanover Band ensemble. With flourishing careers as both keyboardist and conductor, Egarr was named director of the Academy of Ancient Music, succeeding longtime director Christopher Hogwood, in 2006. He stepped down from that position in 2021 and was succeeded by Laurence Cummings. Egarr has conducted a wide variety of other groups and performances, including the ensembles Tafelmusik and the Handel and Haydn Society, modern-instrument groups, including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and a unique staged version of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, at England’s Glyndebourne Festival in 2007. In 2019, he was named music director of San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and he has been principal guest conductor of the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague, Netherlands. Egarr has concertized worldwide on the harpsichord and is also one-half of an acclaimed Baroque duo with violinist Andrew Manze. Egarr made notable recordings as a harpsichordist through the early 2000s decade. Many of his early recordings appeared on the Globe Records label, but beginning in 2000, he recorded for Harmonia Mundi. His recording debut as a conductor came on that label in 2008 with an album of Handel organ concertos in which he performed as soloist and conducted the Academy of Ancient Music from the keyboard. In the late 2010s, he also recorded for the Linn label; his releases there include a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, and in 2019, he issued an album of keyboard music by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. As director of the Academy of Ancient Music, he released albums on that ensemble’s in-house label, including a recording of J.L. Dussek's Messe solemnelle in 2020 and a pair of Mozart piano concertos with fortepianist Robert Levin in 2023. ~ James Manheim