Ludger Rémy

German harpsichordist, conductor and musicologist Ludger Rémy was born in Kalkar on 4 February 1949. He studied harpsichord in Freiburg and then with Kenneth Gilbert in Paris.

He felt an obligation to meet the challenge set by German music theorist Johann Mattheson to combine theory and practice in music. Rémy's main research subject was seventeenth and eighteenth century German music, reviving discovered works by performing and recording them. This included the revival of Domenico Sarro's opera Didone abbandonata in a shortened concert version, in 2005.

He founded Les Amis de Philippe (an orchestra named after Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach) in 1994, and recorded C P E Bach's concertos with them in 1995, directing from the harpsichord.

From 1995 until 1999 he directed the Telemann-Kammerorchester Michaelstein, recording Telemann's oratorio Der Tod Jesu with this group (plus soloists and the Magdeburger Kammerchor) in 1999. He made about seventy CD recordings, as both instrumentalist and conductor, and several of them have been awarded important prizes.

He taught at several German academies, and became Professor of Early Music at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden in 1998.

From 1995 until 2007 he was on the jury of the International Competition for Harpsichord and Fortepiano at the Flanders Festival in Bruges.

Ludger Rémy, one of the leading musicians active in the rediscovery and revival of early German music, died on 21 June 2017, aged sixty-eight.

A selection of articles about Ludger Rémy

CD Spotlight. An Epic Undertaking - Hänssler Classic's C P E Bach edition, recommended by Gerald Fenech. '... an exhilarating collection of C P E Bach's works ...'