MALCOLM PROUD
Harpsichord
Organ
Piano
Born in Dublin Malcolm Proud studied piano with Elizabeth Huban, organ with David Lee, and harpsichord with John Beckett. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, the Music Conservatory Copenhagen and the Sweelinck Conservatory Amsterdam where he studied with Gustav Leonhardt. A finalist in the Bruges International Harpsichord Competition in 1980 he was awarded first prize at the Edinburgh International Harpsichord Competition in 1982.
He has performed throughout Europe, the USA and Japan. In Ireland he has played at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, the Sligo and Galway Early Music Festivals, the Festival in Great Irish Houses and the Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival. He has participated regularly in the annual Bach series at St. Ann's Church in Dublin performing all six of J.S. Bach’s English and French suites, the violin and harpsichord sonatas with Maya Homburger, the Art of Fugue, the Goldberg Variations and in 2010 the Musical Offering with Camerata Kilkenny and Dutch flautist Wilbert Hazelzet.
In recital on organ he has played in Dublin at the National Concert Hall, St. Michael's Dun Laoghaire and Christ Church Cathedral, at Pembroke College in Cambridge, Antwerp Cathedral, Limburg-an-Lahn, Basel, Maria Enzersdorf and Perchtoldsdorf in Vienna, Aveiro in Portugal, King’s Chapel Boston, Charlottesville Virginia and on the historic organs of Valère-Sion in Switzerland, Ottobeuren in Germany, Udine in Italy, and Frederiksborg Castle Denmark. In 2007 he recorded a CD of Bach’s Clavierübung Book 3 in Stein-am-Rhein Switzerland for Maya Recordings.
A member of period instrument groups Camerata Kilkenny and the Irish Baroque Orchestra he has performed harpsichord concertos by J.S. Bach with Chandos Baroque Players in Montreal, Calgary and Pasadena, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Gustav Leonhardt in London and Birmingham, the English Baroque Soloists under Sir John Eliot Gardiner in Zürich and London, the EU Baroque Orchestra in Bremen and the Gabrieli Consort at La Chaise Dieu Festival in France.
In August 2010 he was the harpsichord soloist in Bach’s 5th Brandenburg Concerto with John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists at the Schleswig Holstein Festival in Germany and at the BBC Proms in London.
As a continuo player he participated in John Eliot Gardiner's 'Bach Cantata Pilgrimage' in 2000, and in 2001 he toured Japan with Mark Padmore and the Purcell Quartet in performances of Monteverdi's Orfeo in Tokyo, Osaka and Mito.
In 1997 he partnered Swiss baroque violinist Maya Homburger in a series of concerts in New England for the Cambridge Society for Early Music. In 2002 he performed with baroque violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch and cellist/gambist Richard Tunnicliffe in Carmel California and at the Frick Collection in New York.
With Camerata Kilkenny he has played in Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Latvia, Estonia and Belgium and has recorded Biber’s Mystery Sonatas (awarded a ‘Preis der deutschen schallplattenkritik’) and Bach’s Musikalische Opfer which is due for release in the Autumn of 2010.
Most recently he has returned to playing piano in recitals of music by Haydn, Mozart and Debussy with Irish soprano Roisin O’Grady in Wexford, Waterford and at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.
He has broadcast extensively for RTE radio and television, BBC, WDR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
His numerous CD recordings include Bach's Goldberg Variations (Maya Recordings); Bach's 5th Brandenburg Concerto with both the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Virgin) and the English Baroque Soloists (SDG); Bach's Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord with Maya Homburger (Maya Recordings); Purcell's Harpsichord Music (Meridian); Bach’s concerto for Flute, Violin and Harpsichord with the English Baroque Soloists (SDG); Bach's Clavierubung Bk. 3 (Maya Recordings); Scarlatti Cantatas with Nancy Argenta and Chandos Baroque Players (EMI); Vivaldi sonatas for violin and continuo with Elizabeth Wallfisch (Hyperion); Italian chamber music with Monica Huggett and the Irish Baroque Orchestra Chamber Soloists and Mozart Concert Arias with Soprano Lenneke Ruiten and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra (Pentatone).
A lecturer on the BA Degree Course in Music at the Waterford Institute of Technology he is also organist and choirmaster at St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny.
