Nicholas McGegan

Music Director

For the London Independent he is “one of the finest baroque conductors of his generation.” For the New Yorker magazine, “an expert in 18th century style.” But the Cleveland Plain Dealer got right to the point when it called Nicholas McGegan “a welcome Energizer Bunny, bringing rhythmic zest to all things baroque.” McGregan is known throughout the world for performances that match authority with enthusiasm, scholarship with joy, and curatorial responsibility with evangelical exuberance.

In more than two decades as its music director, McGegan has established the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra as the leading period-performance band in America – and at the forefront of the “historical” movement worldwide, thanks to notable appearances at such venues as Carnegie Hall, London Proms, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and the International Handel Festival in Göttingen, Germany, where McGegan has been artistic director since 1991.

With both the Göttingen Handel Festival and Philharmonia Baroque, McGegan has defined an approach to period style that sets the current standard: probing, serious but not dogmatic, and recognizing that the music of the past does not belong in a museum or academia, but in vigorous engagement with an audience, for pleasure and delight on both sides of the platform edge.

“If Nicholas McGegan is conducting,” wrote the Los Angeles Times, “closing your eyes means missing something vital. Other conductors may interpret baroque scores as plains of sewing machine rhythms and textures; McGegan finds in them rivulets, courses, hairpin turns and breezes gusting through valleys and up and around mountains… At every move, his musicians respond instantly, fluidly, and the music springs into life and stays alive.”

He has also been a pioneer in the process of exporting historically informed practice beyond the small world of period instruments to the wider one of conventional symphonic forces, guest-conducting orchestras, such as Concertgebouw, Suisse Romande, Halle, and Philadelphia; symphonies, such as Toronto, Sydney, Montreal, and Houston; and such opera companies as Covent Garden, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Washington. McGegan was principal conductor in 1993-1996 of Sweden’s perfectly preserved 18th-century theater of Drottingholm, running its annual opera festival.

Sample engagements in the given season might include Bach with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Rameau with the Cleveland Orchestra, Purcell with the Chicago Symphony, and Handel with the New York Philharmonic. Summer may take him to Aspen, Drottingholm, and the Hollywood Bowl. He also has teaching residencies at Juilliard and Yale. As proof that his repertory interests do actually extend beyond well beyond the baroque era, McGegan has conducted 20th-century masters, such as performances of Lutoslawski with the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

His discography of over 100 releases includes the world premiere recording of Handel’s Susanna, which attracted both a Gramophone Award and a Grammy nomination, and issues of the same composer’s Solomon, Samson, and Acis and Galatea (this last one a rarity in that it unearthed the little-known version adapted by Mendelssohn). Among his other rediscoveries is the first performance in modern times of Handel’s masterful but mislaid Gloria. McGegan has also broken new ground in experimental dance-collaborations with Mark Morris, notably at festivals like Edinburgh, Ravinia, and New York’s Mostly Mozart (and also at Cal Performances in Berkeley).

Born in England, Nicholas McGegan was educated at Oxford, Cambridge, and the Royal College of Music, London. On June 12, 2010, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Elizabeth II. The honor cited McGegan’s “services to music overseas.”

Other awards include an honorary professorship at Georg-August University, Göttingen, and an official “Nicholas McGegan Day,” declared by the Mayor of San Francisco to mark his 20th anniversary with Philharmonia Baroque. The citation on that curious day talked loftily of his achievement in presenting “great music that enriches lives, inspires passion for period instrument performance, connects audiences to history, preserves tradition, and celebrates creative genius.”

But as McGegan himself said when a journalist talked admiringly of his work with an Orchestra: “I’m not working with them. I’m having fun with them.” It makes a difference.