With the demise of Lucy Carolan, who died at the age of 62 alone in her Edinburgh home, Scotland has lost an ace harpsichordist but, at least in my experience, deeply private musician.
A pupil of the renowned Edinburgh teacher Mary Moore, as well as of the austere Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam, she was admired for her performances of Bach’s keyboard partitas, which she also successfully recorded.
When her career got going, Edinburgh’s alluring Russell Collection of old keyboard instruments at St Cecilia’s Hall became her adventure playground, from which she could select harpsichords and other instruments for specialist recitals.
A fine accompanist, and valued member of the Scottish Early Music Consort, she lectured at Cambridge and Birmingham, toured Europe, yet appeared less frequently in public than she might have done.
Opportunities to review her were, for me, few and far between. The discreet strains of a tiny domestic clavichord - a sound-world offering much, so it has been claimed, to the solitary performer-listener - were something she could employ as expressively as the glitter of a harpsichord. She will be quietly missed.
9 October 2015
A pupil of the renowned Edinburgh teacher Mary Moore, as well as of the austere Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam, she was admired for her performances of Bach’s keyboard partitas, which she also successfully recorded.
When her career got going, Edinburgh’s alluring Russell Collection of old keyboard instruments at St Cecilia’s Hall became her adventure playground, from which she could select harpsichords and other instruments for specialist recitals.
A fine accompanist, and valued member of the Scottish Early Music Consort, she lectured at Cambridge and Birmingham, toured Europe, yet appeared less frequently in public than she might have done.
Opportunities to review her were, for me, few and far between. The discreet strains of a tiny domestic clavichord - a sound-world offering much, so it has been claimed, to the solitary performer-listener - were something she could employ as expressively as the glitter of a harpsichord. She will be quietly missed.
9 October 2015
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