Alexander Ferdinand Grychtolik

‘To my mind, dealing with Early Music is at once interpretation, improvisation, and composition: a unified creative process,’ the harpsichordist, improviser, and music researcher Alexander Ferdinand Grychtolik summarises his creative work. His many years of experience in grappling with Baroque composition resulted in a number of internationally acclaimed reconstructions of Johann Sebastian Bach’s vocal works; these have been broadcast on the Deutschlandfunk (DLF), the Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), and the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), and have been heralded by critics as ‘uplifting and successful’ (Neue Musikzeitung online 3/2010) and ‘convincingly mastered’ (Concerto 232/2010). Further, he published with Edition Peters a first reconstruction of the late version of Bach’s St Mark Passion of 1744 – proven to have existed in 2009 – as well as of the so called Cöthen Trauer-Music of 1729. Born in Berlin, Grychtolik studied harpsichord with Bernhard Klapprott and Frédérick Haas alongside his studies of architecture. Afterwards, he was awarded the first German teaching position for Baroque improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik at Weimar. Amongst others, he has held further teaching positions at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt am Main. With his partner Aleksandra Magdalena Grychtolik, he performs concert programmes for one or two cembali across Europe, in which compositions by the Bach family as well as historical improvisation feature particularly strongly. Together with his ensemble Mitteldeutsche Hofmusik, founded by him in 2008, Grychtolik devises projects on the musical survivals of Baroque residencies and their cultural circles. These projects focus on orchestral works and occasional cantatas by Central German protagonists such as Bach, Fasch, and Telemann. Grychtolik received a scholarship by the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F. V. S. in connection with the summer academy Concerto21 in 2010. More information on the artist: www.grychtolik.com.