CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD

Cambridge University Honorary Doctorate for Christopher

Christopher's Honorary Doctorate of Music was conferred in the University's Senate-House on Monday 23 June 2008.

The other Honorary Graduands were: The Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu, David Gross, Sir Ralph Harry Robins, and Herman Waldman. To see a short video of the event from the website of the University, scroll to the bottom of this news item.

At the ceremony, The Orator made a speech about each of the Honorary Graduands. The English translation of The Orator's speech for Christopher is posted here (you can also read the Latin text if you click the 'Read More' link.


'THERE stands before you a distinguished musician beloved of the Muses. He began his career as a harpsichordist, and quickly gained renown as a major proponent of early music and as a conductor of the greatest skill. His repertoire runs the gamut from ancient to modern: his name is associated with Haydn and Handel, but he is also a devotee of the neo-Classical and neo-Baroque, and he has a particular penchant for Czech composers. Indeed, the Martinu Society of Prague awarded him their medal. But whatever he is working on, from whatever period, whether he is playing or conducting others, there is one thing in particular that marks out his music and draws praise from the critics: he does not allow a single note to be played until he has used all his skill to discover and recreate the original intention of the composer.

For he is not just a musician, but a student of the art, or rather science, of music. No, not a student, but a most learned practitioner. For the techniques of textual criticism which others apply to Greek and Roman authors, he (who indeed read Classics as an undergraduate at Pembroke College), applies to music. He has produced many editions, including of Mendelssohn's overtures and symphonies; by showing their many variations he has revealed how the composer produced his art.

But for those like your Orator whom the Muses begrudge any such skill, it is his talent which is the greatest marvel. What praise do the critics not lavish upon him? Is there an opera house in which he is not known, which does not welcome him with open arms? The City of Halle this year awarded him the Handel Prize. Today we add our honours to theirs.

I present to you

CHRISTOPHER JARVIS HALEY HOGWOOD, C.B.E., M.A.

Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College and of Jesus College, Honorary Professor of Music, Founder and Emeritus Director of the Academy of Ancient Music'

To see the University's press release visit: www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news. Or to read more about the history of the ceremony visit:
www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ

Eberl's Grande Sonate Charactéristique newly published

Anton Eberl
Grande Sonate Charactéristique
in F minor, Op.12
HH194

Christopher's latest edition to be published by Edition HH is now available.

The Grande Sonate Charactéristique in F minor was published between Eberl's visits to Russia, and dedicated to Haydn, possibly in gratitude for his reported praise of Eberl’s opera Die Königin der schwarzen Inseln which had just been staged in Vienna. Its more obvious target, however, might well have been Beethoven’s Grande Sonate Pathétique which had appeared in 1799; the dotted rhythms of Eberl’s Grave maestoso introduction pay clear tribute to the earlier work.

To buy a copy of the edition, please visit Edition HH

Latest Martinu CD reviewed on BBC Radio 3

In addition to Christopher's latest Martinu CD being made Editor's Choice in July's issue of Gramophone magazine, it was also reviewed on BBC Radio 3's programme CD Review. The programme details and playlist can be found by clicking on the relevant link on the following page: CD Review.
For the Gramophone review, please continue reading here:

Suite concertante for Violin and Orchestra – first version, H276; second version, H276A. Rhapsody-Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, H337.
Bohuslav Matousek vn/va
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Christopher Hogwood
Hyperion CDA67673 (65', DDD)

Suite, second version – comparative version:
Matousek, Czech PO, Hogwood (12/02) (SUPR) SU3653-2
Rhapsody-Concerto – comparative versions:
Imai, Malmö SO, DePriest (11/91) (BIS) BIS-CD501
Telecky, Slovak PO, Trhlik (9/92) (CAMP) RRCD1317
Bukac, Czech RSO, Válek (3/07) (CALL) CAL9364

Martinu's Suite concertante has as chequered a history as any work I know. Commissioned in 1938 by Samuel Dushkin – who premiered Stravinsky's Concerto and for whom Martinu had already written his then-still-unperformed First Concerto – Martinu planned a set of five Czech dances for violin and orchestra. Completed in early 1939, Dushkin's efforts to secure a performance proved vain until 1943, and then in a violin-with-piano reduction, the orchestral version (minus its central Scherzo-caprice which is lost) only being premiered in 2000. Dushkin requested a revision but received a new four-movement (1943-44) of which only the opening movement has much connection with its precursor. Successfully premiered in 1945 and published, the new Suite languished unplayed until 1999.

I am at a loss to explain such neglect. Both versions are delightful, appealing in idiom, avoiding full-concerto gravitas and brightly scored. The first version's Meditation is rather elegiac and may, as Ales Brezina suggests in the booklet, reflect Martinu's faltering liaison with his former pupil, Vítezslava Kaprálová. Matousek, who premiered the first version and revived the second (recording it with Hogwood for Supraphon), plays both with great understanding and finesse: the music needs lightness of touch and receives it here. Both versions of the Suite run out somewhat longer than Dushkin's projected timings but the tempi feel right.

In the Rhapsody-Concerto Matousek shows himself as adept a viola-player as he is violinist, sweeter-toned than Telecky and a match for Imai and Bukac. Hogwood and the Czech Philharmonic again provide immaculate accompaniments, Hyperion's sound in Prague's Rudolfinum preferable to BIS's in Malmö. (The rivals are all mixed-composer discs.) This third volume in Hyperion's invaluable series is as desirable as its predecessors: highly recommended.

Guy Rickards

To read a review from the Times from 10 May, please visit Times Online

To buy your copy, please visit Hyperion Records

To read the sleeve notes click on the Read More button

Halle Handel Prize

Christopher has been selected as this year's recipient of the Handel Prize from the City of Halle (Saale), in Germany. Christopher was in Halle on 5 June to accept his award.

The award recognizes Christopher's unique contribution to the understanding of the life and works of George Friedrich Handel. Christopher's Handel projects for 2007 included rare concert performances of the opera Amadigi, the publication of an important edition of Handel's 8 Suites for keyboard HWV426-433 (adapted by Gottlieb Muffat), and the release of a revised version of Christopher's classic biography of Handel. Projects in 2008 include performances of Flavio with the Academy of Ancient Music, an edition of the Musick for the Royal Fireworks, and also Handel's 6 Fugues for keyboard (adapted by Gottlieb Muffatt). This year also sees the publication of Christopher's paper, on Handel's use of timpani and percussion, from the Michaelstein Conference.

James Fenton discusses Handel

In an article by James Fenton on changing fortunes in Handel operas, the following passage noted the recent AAM performance of Flavio at the Barbican:

'As for the operas, matters were even worse. The operas were dead. "Occasional attempts at revival, although revealing untold glories to musicians of sober and patient tastes, have only shown that there is no hope of ever restoring these works to a stage which no longer resorts to extravagant sumptuousness of production for its own sake, nor has any use for the stiff formality of endless successions of da capo arias."

Handel's fortune really was at its nadir when his supporters, not his detractors, spoke in this way. Blom goes on: "The fact is that Handel's operas are merely so many secular oratorios in costume, on the whole less dramatic than the oratorios themselves because they lack the choral climaxes, and that we might as well think of building flats and factories in the baroque manner as of putting them on stage again except occasionally and experimentally."

I was thinking of this passage during Christopher Hogwood's concert performance of Handel's Flavio, re de' Langobardi at the Barbican a few days ago. A succession, yes, although not an endless succession, of arias; a plot that was of no great concern to the audience; rather little recitative; but a fluent and unhesitating progression through the score, which came over like a succession of demonstrations: this is what it is like to be angry, to feel vengeful, to be in love, to mourn, to be triumphant. It was like an unfolding essay in the emotions, acted out both through the singing voices and through the descriptive power of the orchestration.

The practice of concert performances of rare operas, with or without some element of acting, of semi-staging (in this case largely confined to some interaction between the singers, according to the demands of the script) - how simple it all seemed to achieve. How unproblematic. How impossible (it would appear) to predict in 1935.' James Fenton

To read the whole article visit www.guardian.co.uk

New edition of Water Music/Music for the Royal Fireworks

Series IV, volume 13 in the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (HHA) has just been published by Bärenreiter (BA4088). This volume Water Music/Music for the Royal Fireworks has been edited by Christopher Hogwood and Terence Best.


The HHA is a collected Critical Edition of Handel’s works based on a comprehensive study of the surviving sources and is intended to serve both scholarly and practical needs.

Ode for St Cecilia’s Day is the next project Christopher will be editing for the HHA.

For more information on the volumes available, please visit Hallische Händel Ausgabe.

New edition of Handel/Muffat 6 Fugues for Keyboard

George Frideric Handel
6 Fugues for Keyboard (1735)
HWV 605-610
'mises dans une autre applicature pour la facilité de la main'
by Gottlieb Muffat (1736)

The second volume in the Handel/Muffat series edited by Christopher is available now, published by Ut Orpheus.

Although Handel and Gottlieb Muffat (1690-1770) – ‘the other Amadeus’, son of the composer Georg Muffat – never met, Muffat’s name is well known to Handelians as the source of the extensive but unacknowledged ‘borrowings’ Handel made in his Ode for St Cecilia’s Day and the Concerti Grossi Op. 6, all deriving from Muffat’s Componimenti musicali published in 1739. There are also modified quotations from Muffat in the Op. 7 Organ Concerti and in Judas Maccabaeus, Joshua, Solomon and Theodora.

The present editions aim to redress the balance by presenting Muffat’s acknowledged ‘recreations’ of Handel’s most famous keyboard publications. The first volume contains the 8 Suites (Suite des Pieces Pour le Clavecin, first issued in 1720), found in Muffat’s own autograph in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Mus.ms 9160). The second volume includes the set of 6 Fugues (Six Fugues or Voluntarys of 1735).

While these Handel originals have been well served by modern scholarship, until now this important alternative version of the suites and fugues has never been published.

For information on how to obtain the edition, please visit Ut Orpheus