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 cut to the quick when it called Nicholas McGegan 'a welcome Energizer Bunny, bringing rhythmic zest to all things baroque'. And as such he is known throughout the world for performances that match authority with enthusiasm, scholarship with joy, and curatorial responsibility with evangelical exuberance.
Through more than twenty years 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 Carnegie Hall, the London Proms, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the International Handel Festival, Gottingen where he has been artistic director since 1991.
In Gottingen and with the PBO he has defined an approach to period style that sets the current standard: probing, serious but undogmatic, recognising that the music of the past doesn't belong in a museum or in 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'.
Active in opera as well as the concert hall, he was principal conductor of Sweden's perfectly preserved 18th Century theatre Drottingholm 1993-6, running the annual festival there. And he has 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 like the Concertgebouw, Suisse Romande, Halle, Philadelphia, as well as the Toronto, Sydney, Montreal and Houston Symphonies, and opera companies like Covent Garden, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Washington.
Engagements in the current season 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. He has teaching residencies at Juilliard and Yale. Summer takes him to Aspen, Drottingholm, and the Hollywood Bowl. And as proof that his repertory interests do actually extend beyond 1750, he also conducts the Hong Kong Philharmonic in Lutoslawski.
His discography of over 100 releases includes the world premiere recording of Handel's Susanna, which attracted both a Gramophone Award and Grammy nomination, and recent issues of the same composer's Solomon, Samson, and Acis and Galatea (a rarity in that it unearths the little-known version adapted by Felix Mendelssohn). Among his other rediscoveries is the first performance in modern times of Handel's masterly but mislaid Gloria. And he has broken new ground in experimental dance-collaborations with Mark Morris, notably at festivals like Edinburgh, Ravina and the Mostly Mozart in New York.
Born in England, Nicholas McGegan was educated at Oxford, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music, London. His awards include an honorary professorship at Georg-August University, Gottingen, and an official Nicholas McGegan Day, declared by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of two decades' distinguished work with the 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.
Visit Nic on the web.