Christopher Hogwood (1941-2014)

No. 346 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast346

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All through November on our daily podcasts, we are showcasing titles from our In Memoriam series, many of which discussed the contemporaneous loss of a composer or an artist. We have two new podcasts lined up for our Friday series, one (later this month) will showcase an artist we lost earlier this year, but today’s is a long-overdue tribute to a conductor we lost six years ago, Christopher Hogwood.

Quoting from Hogwood’s obituary, at its height in the 1980s, the early music revival was regarded by many as virtually synonymous with the Academy of Ancient Music and Christopher Hogwood. Established in 1973 with instruments of the baroque period, under Hogwood's direction the AAM examined aspects of historical performance practice with scholarly rigour, paving the way for the achievements of other contemporaries such as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM was at this time one of the most frequently recorded period ensembles, soon moving from the baroque era into the classical, to record the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, the complete Mozart piano concertos (with Robert Levin) and a wide range of other music.

Hogwood's philosophy with the orchestra, and indeed in all his projects, was to attempt to understand and recreate the composer's intentions, in terms of both notation and performance. To this end he would return to the original sources, correct publishing errors and evaluate textual alterations in subsequent editions. Much of the repertoire the orchestra performed was given in editions prepared by Hogwood himself.

By the 1980s Hogwood achieved superstar status in the classical sphere, dubbed "the Karajan of early music" on coming third in the 1983 Billboard chart, behind Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa but ahead of any other conductor.

The three works I retained for this homage podcast are from the baroque – two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s less heard orchestral suites (numbers 1 and 4) and a work with vocal soloists, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.

I think you will love this music too.