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Alan Curtis

Alan Curtis

Born: 17th November 1934, Mason, Michigan

Died: 15th July 2015

Nationality: American

Alan Curtis was born in Michigan in 1934 and studied in Illinois and Amsterdam.

Initially a keyboard specialist, having studied the keyboard works of Sweelinck in depth for his PhD and counting the venerable Gustav Leonhardt among his teachers, he increasingly turned towards conducting later in his career - a natural enough move, given the somewhat blurred distinction between conductor and keyboardist in early music. Within the period-performance movement as a whole, his energies were primarily devoted to Handel and Monteverdi, with a Handel series that is to this day regarded as trailblazing (released partly on DG Archiv and partly on Virgin, plus a Giulio Cesare on Naive).

Among his most enduring legacies must surely be the rich treasure-trove of recordings committed to disc by Il Complesso Barocco, the ensemble he founded towards the end of that decade and through which he was able to bring his meticulous research to fruition in performance. Indeed, he went so far as to commission the reconstruction of several early instruments in pursuit of an authentic sound, including the first chitarrone to be built for several hundred years.

Find out more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Curtis_(harpsichordist)

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Obituary, Alan Curtis (1934-2015)

16th July 2015

David remembers the harpsichordist and early music pioneer Alan Curtis, who has died at the age of 80.

Recording of the Week, Handel's Ariodante

9th May 2011

Joyce DiDonato sings the title-role on Alan Curtis’s recording of Handel’s Scottish opera, with Marie-Nicole Lemieux as the dastardly Polinesso and Karina Gauvin as the woman they both love.

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