CONCERTS AND RECITALS

‘Playing Bach’s arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto in D minor, Gerald Gifford earned long and enthusiastic applause after a performance which can only be described as stunning’. (Hexham Courant) ‘Gerald Gifford gave us a deeply felt and committed account of ten chorale preludes by J S Bach … this was communication of the most direct and moving kind’. (Bath & West Evening Chronicle) ‘This was by any standard superlative harpsichord playing; perfectly judged leaps, glittering trills and scalic passages of uniform brilliance being but examples of Gifford’s comprehensive technique’. (Rural Music Schools Association)

I pursue an active international career as an organ and harpsichord recitalist specialising in 16th to 18th-century music, though encompassing wider repertoire as the opportunity allows. In addition to numerous engagements in the United Kingdom, I have also recently played in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA (for two extensive tours, including an organ recital in Washington National Cathedral, and a lecture-recital for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s residency in North Carolina).

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE AND PUBLICITY MATERIALS

Translations of my biographical note can be accessed here and may be downloaded and added to my concert programmes, and used for event publicity as required. High resolution photographs are also available upon request via the contact page.

PROGRAMMING

Organ recital programmes are carefully designed for the instrument(s) available, and are often themed to include music associated with a given composer, instrument, or building (thus Tye, Amner, Harwood, Wills at Ely Cathedral; J P A Fischer at Utrecht Domkerk; Seeger at The Church of Our Lady before Týn, Prague). Amongst BBC broadcasts that I have made are programmes featuring ‘Bach at Weimar’ and ‘The Musical World of Shudi & Broadwood Harpsichords’, both building appropriate repertoire around a central theme. This approach might also include repertoire surveys:

The programme archive contains examples of a range of themed recitals that I have given, and to this may be added many that stem from my research as Honorary Keeper of three famous historic British collections of music, namely The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Dolmetsch Library of Early Music, Haslemere, and Burghley House, Stamford. Recitals such as these benefit from spoken introductions, and this is my normal custom.

LECTURE-RECITALS

I regularly give lecture-recitals for music societies and other special interest groups, and my programming aims to be as responsive as possible to the requirements of individual groups. Topics covered have ranged from general introductions - for example, to early keyboard intruments, or aspects of the organ and its repertoire - to specific topics such as ‘Keyboard Music in Shakespeare’s England’; ‘Bach’s Organ Works for Manuals – exploring and expanding the repertoire’; ‘Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam as Antiquarian of Music’ and ‘The Role of Muzio Clementi as an exemplar of Scarlattian keyboard performance practice in late-18th-century London’.

MASTERCLASSES

Masterclass topics that I have delivered have included ‘Stylistic awareness in Buxtehude’s keyboard music’; ‘Improvisation in the Eighteenth-Century English organ concerto’; ‘The Eighteenth-Century English organ voluntary’ and ‘The disciplines of keyboard continuo realization’.

SOME COMMISSIONS, DEDICATIONS AND PREMIÈRES

A selection of these are listed here.

SOME PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATIONS

Although most of my work nowadays is as an organ or early keyboard instrument soloist, I have been privileged to give chamber concerts and recitals with a number of distinguished colleagues including the singers Dame Felicity Lott, Dame Emma Kirkby, Catherine Bott and James Bowman, the cellist Alexander Baillie, the recorder and viol players Jeanne and Marguerite Dolmetsch and the trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins, with whom I recorded a CD of music for trumpet and organ in Hexham Abbey. A number of performances of the Bach concertos for two or more harpsichords and orchestra have been given, and these regularly feature collaborations with Stephen Cleobury as fellow-soloist. I have worked with numerous ‘period’ and ‘modern’ instrument ensembles throughout my career, both as keyboard soloist or continuo player, and have taken part in performances of a wide range of choral repertoire as organ accompanist.