Music to raise spirits as Proud plays Bach classic

As a youngster growing up in Dublin, Malcolm Proud harboured vague dreams of one day becoming a train driver or maybe a pilot. But those dreams were never serious and, in the end, music won out – always a far more likely possibility. Malcolm’s mother, Yvonne, played and taught piano and one of his earliest memories is of her playing Bach.

He began learning piano and later went on to study the organ as a choirboy in St Bartholomew’s Church in Clyde Road, Ballsbridge.

Malcolm entered Trinity College in 1969, graduating with a degree in music. It was in Trinity that he first came into contact with the harpsichord, a stringed instrument that looks like a piano – it was one of the most important instruments in European music between the 16th century and mid-18th century.

After graduating from Trinity, Malcolm studied harpsichord at the Royal Irish Academy and won a Danish government scholarship to the Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen. Some years later, he attended Amsterdam’s Sweelinck Conservatoire, where he studied under the renowned harpsichordist and organist Gustaf Leonhardt. He won first prize at the Edinburgh International Harpsichord Competition in 1982, having been a finalist in the Bruges International Harpsichord Competition in 1980.

Since then, Malcolm has carved out a national and international career playing harpsichord and organ, with many recordings to his name. He also taught fulltime on the Degree course in Music at the Waterford Institute of Technology until his retirement. And he was organist and choirmaster at St Canice's Cathedral in Kilkenny until he bowed out last year. Inistioge in Kilkenny is his home, where he and his wife Susan, reared their three, now grown-up daughters.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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