GUSTAV LEONHARDT RETIRES

posted by James Reel

Gustav Leonhardt, essentially the first musician to spur interest in historically informed performance of harpsichord music among hundreds of thousands of ordinary record buyers in the 1960s, has played his final concert at age 83.

Leonhardt was not the first artist to make notable harpsichord recordings, but he was the first specialist in Baroque style to have a broad phonographic impact. Wanda Landowska's recordings in the 1940s and '50s were popular, but still very much of the Romantic school. Ralph Kirkpatrick and Fernando Valenti made little splashes with their Scarlatti records, and other musicians, such as Karl Richter, did have a harpsichord presence on LP, but it was the discographically prolific Leonhardt whose sober, scholarly, but rarely dry performances were imprinted on the generation of classical record collectors active in the 1960s. His was not the only way to perform Baroque music; indeed, one might count Igor Kipnis, with his wry showmanship and florid approach to ornamentation, as the progenitor of such later harpsichordists as Scott Ross and almost anyone from a Mediterranean country. But Leonhardt's way influenced later harpsichordists from England (notably Trevor Pinnock), the Netherlands and Germany.

He hasn't recorded in years, yet he has continued to perform from time to time. But after a recent, draining recital in France, at which he looked thin and frail and apparently barely had the stamina to make it through an encore, Leonhardt abruptly decided that it was time to retire, and canceled all his future concerts. It's sad to see him go, but thanks to his work, there will be no shortage of fine harpsichordists to take his place on disc and on the concert stage.

If you can read French, or persuade your browser to come up with an adequate translation, you can learn about his decision here.