Born a century ago this year, George Malcolm became the leading harpsichordist of the postwar era, until his highly individual and compelling idiom was eclipsed by a new generation of period-style performance. Malcolm turned his Thomas Goff instrument into a multicoloured engine of dramatic and brilliant effects, employing hard-driven rhythms and rapid changes of registration to create wonderful sonorities. It was Malcolm’s rhythmic grip and superb musicianship that compelled attention: this collection from the 1960s brings together the ultra-high-speed Flight of the Bumblebee with serious Couperin and Bach, finishing with Templeton’s jazzy Bach Goes to Town, and Malcolm’s own riposte, a fugal hornpipe, Bach Before the Mast. Gripping nostalgia!
