* En anglais uniquement
Collegium Musicum 90 is one of Britain's best-known and highly regarded period-instrument ensembles. One of its unusual features is that it was founded and directed by two leaders, one most associated with historical music performance and the other with his work with standard modern orchestras.
Born in 1941, violinist
Simon Standage is one of the best-known instrumentalists on London's busy period instruments stage. He has played in modern music ensembles, having been a sub-leader (i.e., assistant concertmaster) of the
English Chamber Orchestra (1974-1978) and leader (concertmaster) of the
City of London Sinfonia (1980-1989).
However, he became best known as the leader of
the English Concert (1973-1991), the famous period-instrument group founded by harpsichordist
Trevor Pinnock, and as the first violinist of the Salomon Quartet, the first major British quartet to use period string instruments -- instruments set up with the same sorts of strings, bows, bridges, and so forth as in the period of the music to be played.
Richard Hickox, six-and-a-half years younger, was an organ scholar at Queen's College Cambridge who in 1971 founded the
City of London Sinfonia and the Richard Hickox Singers and specialized in Baroque music, but on regular instruments. Despite his initial reputation for Baroque music, his skills as a choral conductor in particular eclipsed it, and in 1976 he became the conductor of the
London Symphony Chorus. He also has had leadership positions with the
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the
Northern Sinfonia, the
San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and the
London Symphony Orchestra.
It was in the midst of this success (which also included
Hickox's frequent conducting of opera) that
Standage and
Hickox in 1990 co-founded the
Collegium Musicum 90 to be a standing Baroque period orchestra. (The name Collegium Musicum, or musical guild, has been used in the names of so many groups that it is practically a generic term for Baroque-era ensembles.) It has become
Hickox's primary means of performing the Baroque music that interested him so much in the early part of his career.
Collegium Musicum 90 established itself quickly. It gained an exclusive contract with the British record company Chandos and has made several records. It has toured Europe and most of the major British music festivals. It has performed at the BBC Promenade Concerts, the City of London Festival, and the Cheltenham Festival, and its recording of
Purcell's Dido and Aeneas was chosen by the BBC to be the soundtrack of a filmed version of the opera made in connection with the
Purcell tercentenary observances in 1995.