Cambridge Early Music - Douglas Hollick

He has played widely in the UK  and Europe, and on four visits to Australia. He teaches in Clare and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, and from 1996 to 2011 was a visiting tutor in organ and harpsichord at the Birmingham Conservatoire. He is also an internationally recognised instrument maker and restorer of early keyboard instruments, and has had experience in organ building as well. Recent years have seen him playing early piano as well as organ, harpsichord and clavichord, complementing his interest in the music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Douglas was awarded a year 2000 Churchill Fellowship to visit North Germany and Denmark researching organs and other keyboard instruments of Buxtehude and the young J S Bach, and the acoustics of the great brick Baltic area churches. His recordings on Riverrun Records are Harpsichord and organ music of Christophe Moyreau, Buxtehude, master and pupil, recorded in Buxtehude’s church of Sct Mariae at Helsingør in Denmark, Music from the period of the French Revolution for harpsichord, square piano and organ, and  Music of the Baroque avant-garde for harpsichord and organ released in July 2007 as a tribute to Buxtehude in his tercentenary year. His most recent CD is Bach: under the influence recorded on the Metzler organ of Trinity College Cambridge, with works from the Andreas Bach Buch including the Passacaglias of both Buxtehude and Bach, and based in part around the researches into numerology by Dutch organist Piet Kee, who died earlier this year.

The programme for October 18th will include a number of works from the new CD, particularly those which link with the numerology research of Piet Kee, such as the Passacaglias of both Buxtehude and Bach. That of Buxtehude thought to be based around the phases of the Moon, so four sections each of seven variations, while the Bach has complex proportions that seem to be based around the Golden Section. Music by Matthias Weckmann, Heinrich Scheidemann, Johann Pachelbel and Georg Böhm will complete a fascinating  journey through some of the major influences on the young J S Bach from North Germany and his time living with his elder brother after their parents had both died. It was this elder brother Johann Christoph who compiled the collection which became known as the Andreas Bach Buch, after the name of Johann Christoph’s son who inherited the collection.

The concert is dedicated to the memory of Selene Webb, with whom as Chapel Secretary in Trinity College Douglas Hollick worked closely, both looking after harpsichords in College, and with a number of concerts, including that in memory of music and bookseller Brian Jordan. Selene was thrilled with the concert ten years ago to launch Douglas’ Baroque avant-garde CD, so it is very fitting that this concert should remember Selene and her tireless work to promote and encourage interest in early music in Cambridge