page_title: Trevor Pinnock
section_title: The English Concert
hierarchical_section_title: Trevor Pinnock / Biography and career / The English Concert
caption_attribution_description: Trevor Pinnock directs the European Brandenburg Ensemble in their recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Sheffield, December 2006. The violinist that can be seen in the background is Kati Debretzeni.
context_page_description: Trevor David Pinnock CBE is a British harpsichordist and conductor.
  He is best known for his association with the period-performance orchestra The English Concert which he helped found and directed from the keyboard for over 30 years in baroque and early classical music. He is a former artistic director of Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra and founded The Classical Band in New York.
  Since his resignation from The English Concert in 2003, Pinnock has continued his career as a conductor, appearing with major orchestras and opera companies around the world. He has also performed and recorded as a harpsichordist in solo and chamber music and conducted and otherwise trained student groups at conservatoires. Trevor Pinnock won a Gramophone Award for his recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos with the European Brandenburg Ensemble, an occasional orchestra formed to mark his 60th birthday.
context_section_description: In November 1972 the Galliard Trio expanded to become The English Concert, an orchestra specialising in performances of baroque and early classical music on period instruments. The orchestra initially started with seven members but soon grew in size. The decision to move to period performance was taken for a number of reasons:
  What I really had in mind was a journey of discovery into the unknown. Although I felt there were excellent interpretations of baroque music performed on modern instruments, I sensed that we'd come to the end of the road – and yet I knew that there were still discoveries to be made. I was thinking about the interesting experiments made by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt, although I knew we'd have to experiment in our own way. It was a huge challenge; playing period instruments wasn't as easy as it is today, and finding out their secrets was a difficult process. Nowadays an extraordinarily high technical level has been achieved and the upcoming generations don't have any of the problems we pioneers faced. We cleared the way.
  Pinnock was at the forefront of the period performance movement and the revitalisation of the baroque repertoire; the reaction of Leonard Bernstein to his performances is typical: "In my opinion, the work of the conductor Trevor Pinnock in this area is particularly exciting – his performances of Bach and Handel make me jump out of my seat!"
  The English Concert's London debut was at the English Bach Festival in 1973. In 1975, Pinnock played the harpsichord in the first ever performance of Rameau's last opera, Les Boréades, under John Eliot Gardiner.
  He toured North America with The English Concert for the first time in 1983; he had earlier spent two periods as Artist in Residence at Washington University, St. Louis. His debut at The Proms was in 1980; he later directed Handel's oratorio Solomon in 1986 and many other large-scale works with his orchestra. They toured worldwide and made numerous recordings, Pinnock directing "with a characteristic energy and enthusiasm which are readily communicated to audiences." The Choir of the English Concert was at first an ad-hoc group of singers assembled as needed, originally in 1983 for the first 20th century performance of Rameau's Acante et Céphise; it became an established choir for a period from the mid-1990s at the time they were performing Bach's Mass in B minor. This allowed the ensemble to regularly perform baroque operas, oratorios and other vocal works; a series of Bach's major choral works followed.
  He directed The English Concert, usually from the harpsichord or chamber organ, for over 30 years, deciding, with the other orchestra members, to hand it over to violinist Andrew Manze in 2003. He explained the decision as follows:
  There are other things I want to develop – or rather come back to. Having done The English Concert for 18–20 weeks per year, and guest conducting the rest of the time, I'd sacrificed playing the harpsichord rather more than I wanted to. I had to make a decision to move forward: there were certain solo projects I wanted to do, and I wanted to make the decision now rather than wait until after I am 60 and it's too late to do half of them. [...] There's a wealth of keyboard repertoire I want to revisit. I especially want to go back to the rich English repertoire such as Tomkins, Byrd, Bull and Gibbons.
caption: Pinnock at the harpsichord
exif: {}