Rachel Podger (violin) and Brecon Baroque

Introducing the performers…

Rachel Podger (violin)
Alison McGillivray (cello)
Daniele Caminiti (theorbo)
Marcin Swiatkiewicz (harpsichord)

Over the last two decades Rachel Podger has established herself as a leading interpreter of the Baroque and Classical periods and has recently been described as “the queen of the baroque violin” (Sunday Times). In October 2015 Rachel was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Prize. She was educated in Germany and in England at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied with David Takeno and Micaela Comberti.

Rachel has enjoyed countless collaborations as director and soloist with orchestras all over the world. Highlights include Arte dei Suonatori (Poland), The Academy of Ancient Music, The European Union Baroque Orchestra, Holland Baroque Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik (Toronto), The Palladian Ensemble, Florilegium, The English Concert and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Rachel has also collaborated, toured and recorded extensively with fortepianist Gary Cooper. She is resident artist at Kings Place for their 2016 season titled Baroque Unwrapped.

Rachel records exclusively for Channel Classics and has won numerous awards including a Baroque Instrumental Gramophone Award for La Stravaganza (2003), the Diapason d’Or de l’année in the Baroque Ensemble category for her recording of the La Cetra Vivaldi concertos with Holland Baroque (2012), a BBC Music Magazine award in the instrumental category for Guardian Angel (2014), and multiple Diapasons d’Or. The complete Vivaldi L’Estro Armonico concertos was released in 2015 with her own ensemble Brecon Baroque and has received critical acclaim, winning the concerto category of BBC Music Magazine Awards 2016. In Autumn 2015 celebrations for Rachel’s twenty-fifth disc release, Rosary Sonatas: Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, coincided with Channel Classics twenty-fifth anniversary.

Rachel is founder and Artistic Director of the Brecon Baroque Festival, an annual four-day event bringing top-flight period musicians to the Brecon Beacons. She is an honorary member of both the Royal Academy of Music, where she holds the Micaela Comberti Chair for Baroque Violin (founded in 2008), and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where she holds the Jane Hodge Foundation International Chair in Baroque Violin.

The dynamic ensemble Brecon Baroque was founded in 2007 by Rachel as resident ensemble at her annual Brecon Baroque Festival. The international line-up consists of some of the leading lights in the period-instrument world, such as cellist Alison McGillivray, flautist Katy Bircher, oboist Alexandra Bellamy and violist Jane Rogers, as well as some of Rachel’s former students who now occupy leading positions in many of Europe’s finest ensembles: violinists Bojan Cicic and Johannes Pramsohler.

Brecon Baroque specialises in the music of J S Bach and his contemporaries, mostly as a one-to-a-part ensemble based on the Cafe Zimmerman ensemble which Bach himself directed. They also appear as a small baroque orchestra for Vivaldi, Telemann, Purcell and Handel. The group is in demand at home and abroad: recent highlights include tours of continental Europe, Japan and a UK tour of Mid Wales Opera’s Acis and Galatea in a new collaboration with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

In 2010 Rachel and Brecon Baroque recorded Bach’s Violin Concertos for Channel Classics. This debut CD attracted universal critical acclaim and was quickly hailed as a bench-mark recording of these works. A second disc, Bach’s Double and Triple Concertos, was released in 2013 to rave reviews, including CD of the week nominations for Classic FM, BBC Radio 3 CD Review, HR2 Kultur (Germany) and WQXR (New York). In 2015 the group’s third disc, a complete recording of Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico concertos was Record of the Month for both the BBC Music and Gramophone Magazines, was awarded a Diapason d’Or and was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award.

“There is probably no more inspirational musician working today than Podger.”

Gramophone Magazine

By,
Click here for more information.