First published in The Herald on 27 April, 2016
“There is this general idea that early music should be squeaky clean and that stuff only got dirty in the 19th century. Like, hello?!” Richard Egarr — harpsichordist, conductor — is rehearsing a gripe I suspect he’s been through before. His voice is gaining decibels in the polite hotel cafe: he sounds incredulous, exasperated, all riled up about authentic performance practice. “As if people only started doing rubato in the 19th century! Truth is, everything started getting more tame at the beginning of the 20th century. The further back you go, the more dirt you find. Life wasn’t exactly cleaner in the 17th century, was it? Nah,” he sits back, shaking his head. “Definitely muckier.”