Vital Performance

In this wide-ranging study, pianist and scholar Andrew John Snedden takes a step back, examining the strengths and limitations of Historically Informed Performance.

Andrew Snedden is an international scholar-musician and educator. He has worked as performer, university tutor and lecturer, as school music teacher, and as theatre and church music director.
As pianist, he studied with close associates of Claudio Arrau, and is noted for his lecture-recitals, applying historically-informed performance practice to create entertaining performances of intelligence and passion. Most recently, in 2011 he marked the bicentenary of Liszt’s birth by a series of lecture-recitals performing the composer’s quintessential piano cycle The Years of Pilgramage. As scholar musician, he researches 19th century Romanticist performance practices as evidenced by the earliest recordings and textual sources, with a particular focus on Franz Liszt. He has recently completed a Ph.D., entitled Vital Performance: Culture, Worldview, and Romanticist Performance Practice with Application in Franz Liszt’s Consolations and Années de Pèlerinage Première Année, which included ground-breaking Liszt recordings in a newly reconstructed nineteenth century style. He has completed the first of two books based on this research.