Glen Wilson was born in Illinois, USA in 1952. After studies at the Juilliard School with Albert Fuller, he moved to the Netherlands, where he studied with Gustav Leonhardt from 1971 to 1975. Shortly before taking his Soloist’s Diploma he was engaged as harpsichordist of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, resigning in 1982 in order to devote himself to a growing career as a soloist, in chamber music, and as a teacher at the Utrecht Conservatory and in international masterclasses. In 1988 he accepted a professorship at Germany’s oldest conservatory, the Musikhochschule Würzburg, and moved to Bavaria. He has been guest professor at Tokyo’s two pre-eminent music institutes, the Geidai and Toho Gakuen.
On harpsichord, fortepiano, clavichord and organ Glen Wilson has performed in over thirty countries. In 1980 he became the only person in the history of the Bruges International Competition to sweep all three categories. As duo-partner he has performed with the late Gustav Leonhardt, Emma Kirkby, René Jacobs, Alice Harnoncourt, Max van Egmond, Wieland Kuyken, Michael Chance, and in recent years with the Dutch gamba virtuoso Mieneke van der Velden, with whom he made two much-admired CDs for Channel Classics and one for Ramée. He was a member of Quadro Hotteterre and founder of the Amsterdam Fortepiano Trio with Lucy van Dael and Wouter Möller.
For Netherlands World Radio Wilson produced “Excursions in Early Music”, sixty-five programs broadcast in America, Canada, and Australia. He was continuo-player in large-scale recording projects with the Leonhardt Consort, Concentus Musicus Wien, La Petite Bande, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and was harpsichordist of choice with the Netherlands Opera for twenty years, where he was Nicholas Harnoncourt’s assistant in the cycle of Mozart/da Ponte operas, later recorded for Teldec.
Besides many recordings of chamber music and songs, Glen Wilson recorded seven solo-CDs for Teldec’s “Das Alte Werk”, including a highly-acclaimed Well-Tempered Clavier re-issued as part of the BACH 2000 complete edition. The complete recording of Sweelinck’s works for keyboard (MGN Classics) in which he participated with fourteen Dutch colleagues was awarded an Edison in 2003. Wilson edited the Préludes non mesurés of Louis Couperin with a CD for Breitkopf & Härtel; the volume won the 2004 German Music Publishers’ Prize for best scholarly edition.
His first solo recording for Naxos consisted of twenty-four pieces by this seventeenth-century French master; it became the top selection of the Penguin CD Guide, and was followed in 2005 by a selection of Buxtehude’s harpsichord works which was accorded the same ranking, and named best survey recording by Early Music and Musik und Kirche. The complete works of Gaspard le Roux for one and two harpsichords (with Naoko Akutagawa), the complete Fantasias of Giles Farnaby and William Byrd, harpsichord pieces by Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach, JP Sweelinck and Andrea Gabrieli, the complete Tientos and Variation of Antonio de Cabezón, a disc of Cabezón’s Glosas, the German songs of Joseph Martin Kraus with Wilson on fortepiano, and his recording with Francois Fernandez of Corelli’s Op 5 have since been released, with five more CDs of sixteenth-century repertoire currently planned.
Glen Wilson made his début as conductor with the Netherlands Opera’s production of his edition of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria in 1990. With over sixty performances on three continents (DVD on BBC Opus Arte) the production was called “by far” the outstanding event of the season by The New Yorker. His edition of L’Incoronazione di Poppea premièred in Würzburg in 2003, with Wilson acting as conductor, designer, and stage director. In 2008–9 he conducted Poppea for the Dutch National Opera Academy. In 2013 he will collaborate with Frans Brüggen on his production of Così fan tutte.
For more information, please visit www.glenwilson.eu.
| Box Set Release |
Catalogue Number |
| BUXTEHUDE Cembalowerke, Kammermusik, Geistliche Kantaten |
Naxos 8.503087 |
