Encyclopedia > Nikolaus Harnoncourt

  Article Content

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (born December 6, 1929) is an Austrian conductor, known for his historically accurate performances of music from the classical era and earlier.

Harnoncourt was born in Berlin, was brought up in Graz and studied music in Vienna. He founded Concentus Musicus Wien[?] with his wife, Alice, in 1953 while playing cello with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra[?]. That group was dedicated to authentic performances on period instruments, and by the 1970s his work with it had made him quite well known.

He subsequently performed with many other orchestras using modern instruments, but still with an eye on historical authenticity in terms of tempi, dynamics and so on. He also expanded his repertoire somewhat, continuing to play the baroque works which had made him famous, but also championing the Viennese operetta repertoire.

In 1971, Harnoncourt started a joint project with the conductor Gustav Leonhardt[?] to record all of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas. The project was eventually completed in 1990. In 2001 a critically acclaimed and Grammy Award winning recording of Bach's St. Matthew Passion[?] conducted by Harnoncourt was released, which included the entire score of the piece in Bach's own hand on a CD-ROM.

External links



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Bugatti

... 15, 1991. The car had a quad turbo V12 3500cc engine of 611bhp, powering all four wheels through a six speed gear box, and was capable of 212 mph. At a price of ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 26.3 ms