Frans Brüggen,who has died aged 79, was
a Dutch recorder player, conductor and musicologist who brought the recorder
out of the classroom and into the concert hall as a serious musical instrument.
Later Brüggen explored more carefully
how the instrument was used in the baroque era, while pushing for its
acceptance as a modern instrument — including commissioning works from
composers such as Louis Andriessen and Luciano Berio (notably Gesti, which
tests the performer’s powers of control and interpretation). Indeed, Berio once
described Brüggen as “a musician who is not an archaeologist but a great
artist”. Along the way Brüggen founded
the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, spearheading the move away from the
luscious accounts of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven that had become popular in the
first half of the 20th century and towards a realisation of how the music would
have sounded during the composers’ lifetimes. He and his colleagues went further still,
reimagining works by Mahler, Bruckner and even Debussy on instruments of the
18th century, offering a fascinating — if not widely accepted — interpretation
of their possibilities. Such innovation helped him to avoid being labelled
purely as an early music specialist; indeed, he was once dubbed a romantic of
the historical performance movement. Yet
Brüggen was by no means a lone voice in the early music wilderness, and his
extensive recording legacy includes accounts of Bach, Telemann and Vivaldi with
other pioneers of authentic interpretation, such as Gustav Leonhardt, the harpsichordist,
and Anner Bylsma, the cellist.
Tall, elegant and with big hands,
Brüggen cut a striking figure. Whether surrounded by an orchestra or alone with
only his recorder, he could hold an audience spellbound as he transported them
towards the 18th century. His English was carefully spoken, and on stage he
radiated charisma. Unusually for a wind player, he would sit, rather than
stand, his long legs crossed and his recorder held, noted the author Joel
Cohen, “at an odd and slightly defiant angle to his mouth”. Thanks to the marketing machine of Telefunken,
with which he made more than 50 discs, the Dutch media dubbed him the John
Lennon of classical music. That he went
along with such promotion is indisputable; yet he never compromised the
intellectual rigour of his approach. Asked in 1987 whether he preferred playing
the recorder or conducting an orchestra, he replied: “The recorder for me gives
body to a physical, corporeal love, and the orchestra makes corporeal a
spiritual love. And love is composed of these two aspects. I am in love with
both.”
Frans Brüggen was born in Amsterdam on
October 30 1934, the youngest of nine children. He claimed that boredom during
the war, when many Dutch schools were closed, led him and his brother Hans to
start playing the recorder. As noted on Thwaites's blog, Brüggen said: “I
immediately fell in love with that instrument and tootled my way through the
rest of the war years.” He came to the attention of Kees Otten, the first Dutch
professor of recorder, studying with him from the age of 14 and through his
student years at the Amsterdam Conservatory. “Kees gave very good lessons,” he
recalled, “but straight away I wanted to be better than him.” By the age of 21 Brüggen, who also read Musicology
at the University of Amsterdam, was a professor at the Royal Conservatory in
The Hague, by which time he was giving serious consideration to the role of
historical instruments in the interpretation of older music. He was first heard at the Wigmore Hall in
1957, when he appeared with the Telemann Trio, deftly switching between flute
and treble recorder throughout the concert. Over the next few years he often
appeared with Janny van Wering, a Dutch harpsichordist. But sometimes — such as
in 1966 — Brüggen struck out alone. “This might have made for monotony,” noted
one critic, “but for the two facts that he was a fine artist, able to transcend
all the instrument’s legendary limitations, and that he enlivened his programme
with two avant-garde works specially written for him.” One of the characteristics of the Orchestra of
the Eighteenth Century, which he created with the musicologist Sieuwert Verster
in 1981, was that it used word of mouth (no auditions) to recruit the finest
period instrument players to work together for a few weeks at a time. Another
was that the proceeds of their concerts were shared equally among all the
performers, including the conductor. “I earn the same as the second clarinet,”
Brüggen told The New York Times in 2008. He brought the orchestra to the Proms in
1996, having made his first appearance at the Albert Hall in 1993 conducting
Beethoven’s Choral Symphony with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment,
with which he was joint principal guest conductor with Simon Rattle. A decade
later he conducted the OAE in the South Bank’s “Haydn; The Creative Genius”
series. He also maintained a long relationship with the Scottish Chamber
Orchestra and was visiting professor at Harvard University and the University
of California, Berkeley.
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