Tom Beghin

Tom Beghin (b. Leuven, Belgium, 1967), universally praised as an eloquent, sensitive, and original performer, is at the forefront of a new generation of interpreters of eighteenth and early nineteenth century music. He has performed in Early Music Festivals at Bruges, Utrecht, Paris, Berkeley, Palermo, Florence, Montreal; participated in an epoch-making eight-concert series featuring all Beethoven sonatas on historical pianos in Merkin Hall, New York; concertized with acclaimed orchestras such as the Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, Apollo-Ensemble, Arion, and the Beethoven Academie; teamed up with chamber music partners such as Les vents classiques du Québec, violinist Jaap Schröder, the Kuijken and Festetics String Quartets; is a member of Trio Galatea, with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock and cellist Elisabeth Le Guin. This past summer he was a central guest at the Bruges Early Music Festival, appearing in several recitals (among others with soprano Olga Pasychnyk), performing Schubert’s Wintterreise with tenor Jan van Elsacker, and representing Mozart in a theatrical reconstruction of the well-known competition between Clementi and Mozart (in co-production with playwright Robert Litz and featuring Erin Helyard as Clementi).

His discography on the Eufoda, Bridge Records, Claves, and Klara/Et’cetera labels includes keyboard music of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart (his newest release), Moscheles (number one of a top ten solo piano CD’s recommended by Tower Records in 2001), C.P.E. Bach, as well as songs by Haydn, Zelter and Mendelssohn (with Andrea Folan, soprano), and trios by Haydn and Clementi with Trio Galatea. His newest release, with Klara, features Mozart on a replica of the latter’s Anton Walter piano, reconstruced by Chris Maene on the basis of new organological research by Alfons Huber and others.

As a scholar he has published in journals such as 19th Century Music and collections such as Haydn and His World and The Cambridge Companion to Haydn. With classicist Sander Goldberg he is co-editing a collection of essays, entitled Engaging Rhetoric: Essays on Haydn & Performance, forthcoming with Chicago University Press. Recognized for his expertise in eighteenth-century performance he has given concerts, workshops and lectures at, among others, the Haydn Festival in Esterháza (Fertöd, Hungary), the Utrecht Conservatory, the Cologne Musikhochschule, and the Aula de Música in Alcalá, Spain. In 2004 the Haydn-Institut inducted him as a member.

His research interests center around questions of 18th century & early 19th century performance, rhetoric, aesthetics, connections of style & instrument, social context, gender. Among his ongoing projects is a complete recording of Haydn's keyboard works, carefully planned and executed with financial support from the governments of Canada (SSHRC) and Québec (FQRSC). For this project, a number of historical keyboards have been especially built, some for the very first time, by Chris Maene, Martin Pühringer, and Joris Potvlieghe. In collaboration with McGill colleagues Wieslaw Woszczyk and Martha de Francisco historical rooms have been acoustically measured and are now about to be “virtually” reconstructed in the recording studio.

Tom Beghin studied at the Lemmens Institute in Louvain, Belgium (with Alan Weiss), at the Musik-Akademie in Basel, Switzerland (with Rudolf Buchbinder and Jean Goverts), and received his doctoral degree with Malcolm Bilson and James Webster from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York). After serving on the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, and residing at the National Humanities Center (North Carolina) as its “William J. Bouwsma Fellow,” he is presently Associate Professor at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University, where he teaches music history, performance practice, and fortepiano.