Sigiswald Kuijken
Sigiswald Kuijken ( born February 16, 1944 in Dilbeek in Brussels) is a Belgian violinist, viola player and conductor. He is one of the major pioneers of research into the playing techniques of the 17th and 18th century in the Baroque violin and from 2004 he contributed to the revival of the cello as a spalla.
Life
His education was Kuijken at the conservatories of Bruges and Brussels with Maurice Raskin. Here he met his future wife Marleen Thiers know who first studied with Arthur Grumiaux and later also at Raskin. Kuijken 1964 received his diploma. Already in the period he had with his two brothers from 1960 to 1971 Member of the company founded by Pierre Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles Bartholomée.
At the age of seven he had the first contact with instruments of the Renaissance, whose fascination never let him loose. So the two brothers Wieland and Sigiswald learned self-taught the viol game. After studying both brothers members of the Alarius ensemble ( Brussels), which first was devoted to contemporary music, but were increased with records and radio recordings made in the period of 1964-1972 attracted attention with works from the 17th and early 18th century. During this time, increasingly from 1969, Kuijken began the old techniques of violin playing in self- test rediscover. 1971 to 1996 he was professor of baroque violin at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. During this time he brought countless violinists in the rediscovered techniques. At the same time, he worked several times as a conductor at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music.
In 1972, Kuijken at the request of Gustav Leonhardt, who on behalf of the "Deutsche Harmonia Mundi " a larger ensemble, which could make music on original instruments or exact copies, for a recording of the opera " Bourgeois Gentilhomme " by Jean -Baptiste Lully, this was the birth of the ensemble La Petite Bande. In addition to concerts, which took him around the globe, he is represented in numerous recordings with Gustav Leonhardt and Robert Kohnen harpsichord as well as with his orchestra. Focus of his work is the music of the 17th and 18th century by German, Italian and French composers such as Georg Muffat, Johann Sebastian Bach, Arcangelo Corelli, Jean -Baptiste Lully, Jean -Philippe Rameau, Couperin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He also appears regularly with his two brothers, Wieland Kuijken ( viola da gamba, cello) and Barthold Kuijken ( flute ), are on their instruments also internationally known virtuoso. For family ensemble belongs beside his wife now the second generation with Marie, Piet and Sara Kuijken.
In 2004, Kuijken first time a cello as a spalla, which was made at his suggestion by the musician and luthier Dmitry Badiarov on historical descriptions and illustrations.
From 1993 until his retirement in 2009 Kuijken taught baroque violin at the Dutch-speaking department of the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. The existing since 1986 Kuijken Quartet, in addition to the involved family members as well as violinist Ryo Terakado or François Fernandez, meanwhile, developed a romantic repertoire. In addition to his full-time work as a teacher, he was a visiting professor at the London Royal College of Music at the University of Salamanca, at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève and at the Musikhochschule Leipzig.
In the period from 2005 to 2012, he makes also convinced of the set up by Joshua Rifkin thesis that Bach 's cantatas, motets, passions and masses occupied only with a vocal quartet, sound recordings with the small choir cast of four singers.
On the way to the dissemination of historical performance practice, he has, since 1968, starting as an autodidact, laid the violin without restraint and chin rests freely on the shoulder and set by the free play of art, milestones for the rediscovery of an " authentic sound image " in the baroque violin thus achieved. Sigiswald Kuijken is in contrast to some other doctrines, a staunch advocate of " Chin -off" practice.
Like his colleague Franz Josef Maier and Reinhard Goebel in Cologne and Eduard Melkus in Vienna and Marie Leonhardt in The Hague, he promoted early nurturing a new generation of professional baroque violinist.
Awards
- On February 2, 2007 Kuijken received an honorary doctorate from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
- In February 2009, he endowed with € 20,000 Culture Prize of the Flemish Community was awarded.