PETER HARVEY
Peter Harvey studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and then at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. His broad repertoire includes works from the early Baroque to contemporary composers, although he is principally known through his performances as soloist with ensembles specialising in Early Music, including the English Baroque Soloists, The Gabrieli Consort, The King's Consort and The Purcell Quartet. He is frequently invited abroad by continental groups such as the Collegium Vocale of Ghent, Les Talens Lyriques, Il Seminario Musicale and The Netherlands Bach Society, and had the honour of singing the St John Passion with the choir of St. Thomas’, Leipzig ("Bach's choir"), on their first visit to England, and subsequently in Leipzig for a Good Friday performance.
Peter Harvey's eighty solo recordings cover a wide variety of works from the seventeenth century to the present day, and from the well-loved to the completely unknown. However, the music of J.S. Bach forms the core of his repertoire, both in performances and recordings. He has made various CDs with The Purcell Quartet, including their solo-voice recordings of the four Lutheran Masses, and a CD of early cantatas from the Mühlhausen period - a series which will be followed in due course with a disc of cantatas from the Weimar years. The year 2000 was dominated by the Bach celebrations, and he was particularly in demand as a soloist on Sir John Eliot Gardiner's "Bach Cantata Pilgrimage", recordings of which have begun to be released to considerable acclaim, the first in the series winning the Grammophone "Disc of the Year" award. Amongst many other works, he recorded the renowned solo cantata BWV82 for bass voice, "Ich habe genug", for Deutsche Grammophon. Other major Bach recordings include a very favourably received solo-voices version of the St. Matthew Passion with the Gabrieli Consort, in which he sings the role of Christus and arias.
Recent career highlights include a BBC Prom concert of Purcell's "The Fairy Queen" and Handel's "Athalia" in Madrid, both with The Gabrieli Consort. Peter recently sang the St. John Passion with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, while at Easter, with The King's Consort, he undertook a major European tour of the St. Matthew Passion - a work he also sang in Japan with L'Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne, directed by Michel Corboz. He performed the Christmas Oratorio with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in the Vienna Musikverein, Verona and the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, and has more recently sung the B minor Mass with them in Cöthen. He has made various trips to Canada, where, in addition to concerts of baroque music, he gave a recital of Schubert songs in the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival in the summer. The year 2005 started with a performance in Munich of Haydn’s "Creation", a favourite work he has sang again in the Autumn with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the St. David’s Hall, Cardiff.
Peter Harvey is a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music, London.
