Pianoforte Restoration and Conservation

- Background -

Fergus Hoey (Director)

Fergus Hoey was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford. He has been involved with keyboard instruments all his professional life. After studies at the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal College of Music, he became a self-employed harpsichord technician and tuner, and then turned to instrument making full-time, building his first harpsichord in 1972

Copy of a double manual Harpsichord by Johann Heinrich Gräbner, Dresden 1739

He became an acknowledged maker of quality instruments, used by distinguished musicians and soloists including Christopher Hogwood, Robert Woolley and Timothy Roberts. In reviewing a recital by Trevor Pinnock, the Daily Telegraph critic wrote, "The harpsichord by Fergususon Hoey was very fine. Quite without harshness it has a remarkable sustaining quality to its sonorous tone which is especially beautiful in the Adagio of Bach's D major Toccata, which breathed the same poignancy of its musical counterpart in Schubert's String Quintet."

In 1980, the Times critic, Paul Griffiths wrote "One mark of a good harpsichordist must be that he justifies his choice of instrument, that he does not waste its special qualities nor make one long for the fuller presence of a piano..........the alacrity in rapid figures and ornaments would have flummoxed any piano, but found a perfect response in the sweet-toned new Fergus Hoey harpsichord."

Among the institutions which have purchased harpsichords built by Hoey are the Royal Holloway College, London, and the University Music Departments of Cork, Eire and Queens, Belfast. His instruments have been exported to Italy, Switzerland, Australia, the USA, Germany and Fiji. Among CD recordings featuring them are keyboard works by John Blow on Hyperion and all the Concertos for Harpsichord by Bach with Ivor Bolton and the St. James's Baroque Players.

He has traveled widely as an expert restorer and researcher to a number of countries including France, Spain, New Zealand (where he restored an eighteenth century Kirkman harpsichord for Victoria University), the former German Democratic Republic, where he examined, authenticated and measured (using fibre optics) a rare Saxon harpsichord from the first half of the eighteenth century. He built a replica of this Gräbner instrument in 1983. This harpsichord is now housed at Houghton Hall near King's Lynn in Norfolk.

Whilst in New Zealand he appeared on television and gave a radio recital of works by Purcell, Chambonnières, Louis Couperin, Marchand, Clérambault, and François Couperin. He has worked in cooperation with the BBC (Radio 3) and taken part in programs on Radio 4 and BBC1 Television.

By the middle of the 1980s, having produced over forty harpsichords and spinets, he became interested in the application of these skills in the restoration and construction of 'modern' pianofortes. He undertook further training and study in Leeds, under the distinguished piano builder Alastair Laurence and then began to establish himself in his new career.

Among the instruments he has restored or reconditioned are Steinway grands at Blenheim Palace, Cholmondeley Castle and the Bishop's Palace (Fulham). He has worked extensively with professional performers, and among the pianists for whom he has prepared concert instruments are Alberto Portugheis, Ricardo Requejo, Edith Picht-Axenfeld, and Professor Malcolm Troup in the UK. He has also worked on Steinway pianos in Paris for Akiko Ebi and Piotr Anderszewski, his experience as a player giving him an expert understanding of the mechanical and acoustic standards expected by musicians.

In 1999 he established Alcyonis, a new company based in the small market town of Reepham near Norwich from where he now runs a workshop and gallery dedicated to the restoration of fine German pianos.

 

For more information please use the reply form on this site.