Music Director Academy of Ancient Music
Musical Director London Handel Festival
Music Director Orquestra Barroca Casa da Musica
Laurence Cummings is one of Britain's most exciting and versatile exponents of historical performance both as a conductor and a harpsichord player. He is currently Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, Musical Director of the London Handel Festival, and Music Director of Orquestra Barroca Casa da Música in Porto. A noted authority on Handel, the Guardian has written of him “he now ranks as one of the composer’s best advocates in the world. Self-effacing on the podium, faithful above all to the score, he matches Handel’s energy and invention with unmistakable lyricism, generosity and dignity.”
Frequently praised for his stylish and compelling performances in the opera house, his career has taken him across Europe where he has conducted productions at houses including Opernhaus Zurich (Belshazzar, King Arthur), Theater an der Wien (Saul), Gothenburg Opera (Orfeo ed Euridice, Giulio Cesare, Alcina and Idomeneo). Théâtre du Châtelet (Saul) and Opera de Lyon (Messiah). In the UK he has been a regular at English National Opera (Radamisto, L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Semele, Messiah, Orfeo and The Indian Queen), Glyndebourne Festival Opera (Saul, Giulio Cesare and The Fairy Queen) and Garsington Opera (Vivaldi cycle: L’Incoronazione di Dario, L’Olympiade and La Verita in Cimento), as well as conducting at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre (Berenice and Alceste), Opera North (L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Buxton International Festival (Tamerlano and Mozart’s Lucio Silla) and for Opera GlassWorks (The Rake’s Progress). The 2020/21 season saw his last edition of the Internationale Händel-Festpiele Göttingen, where he was Artistic Director for ten years.
Equally at home on the concert platform, he is regularly invited to conduct both period and modern instrument orchestras worldwide, including Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The English Concert, Handel and Haydn Society Boston, Croatian Baroque Orchestra, La Scintilla Zurich, Juilliard 415, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Musikcollegium Winterthur, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Washington National Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony and in the UK with Royal Northern Sinfonia, Hallé Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Ulster Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
His recordings include discs with Emma Kirkby and Royal Academy of Music on BIS, Angelika Kirschlager and the Basel Chamber Orchestra for Sony BMG, Maurice Steger and The English Concert for Harmonia Mundi and Ruby Hughes and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on Chandos, as well as a series of live opera and concert performances recorded at the Göttingen International Handel Festival and released on Accent. He has also released numerous solo harpsichord recital and chamber music recordings for Naxos.
He was an organ scholar at Christ Church Oxford where he graduated with first class honours. Until 2012 he was Head of Historical Performance at the Royal Academy of Music which led to both baroque and classical orchestras forming part of the established curriculum. He is now the William Crotch Professor of Historical Performance.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Handel's La Resurrezione
St-Martin-in-the-Fields, London 18th April 2022
Cummings proved an exacting judge of the sometimes tricky balance between drama and reflection, teasing out instrumental detail as he went – the woodwind that alternately grieve and console, the warmth in the strings, the gleam in the brass that eventually heralds the triumph of light over darkness.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian ****
"Laurence Cummings had rustled up eight violins rather than Handel's 20, but this still sounded meaty and wonderful in the airy acoustic of St Martin in the Fields... The first half has unstoppable energy thanks to Cummings, bouncing with excitement as he urged his musicians on."
Robert Thicknesse, Opera Now 5*
Alcina
Opera North, Spring 2022
Laurence Cummings encourages really stylish, sensuous musicianship from the Opera North orchestra (he’s also on cracking harpsichord duty)
Neil Fisher, The Times
Laurence Cummings choosing perfect tempos and dynamic contrasts. The score is Handel at his most melodious and subtle, with many passages for small groups of instruments or even solo instruments, and under Cummings the small orchestra plays beautifully
Ron Simpson, The Reviews Hub
Cummings draws colourful, energised playing from a pared-down orchestra
Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk
Laurence Cummings was stylish in is conducting from the harpsichord
Opera Magazine
Haydn's Creation
Academy of Ancient Music, September 2021
Delectable timbres and colours didn't stop leaping from Cummings's expert band, who played with such vigour
Geoff Brown, The Times
Cummings kept his temp lively (as did Haydn, it appears) and drew some thrillingly tight and fierce choruses from the choir behind. This Creation glinted and shone in a bracingly clear light
Boyd Tonkin, theartsdesk
Rodelinda
Göttingen Handel Festival, September 2021
With the Festival Orchestra, Laurence Cummings proves that Handel's music is in the best of hands here. The different moods are worked out with absolute precision, also with tempo variations, and make it possible to understand why this work was so celebrated by the audience at the premiere
Thomas Molke, Online Musik Magazin
the extraordinary interpretation by Cummings that dissects the score, enhancing every nuance of color: the palette of feelings transformed into music
Franco Soda, Giornale della musica
Handel's Messiah
April 2021
Laurence Cummings is an experienced Handel conductor, and ENO’s orchestra played neatly and stylishly
Tristram Kenton, The Times
Saul
Théâtre du Châtelet, Jan 2020
Conducted by the British Laurence Cummings, who also seizes a pivoting organ in the middle of the stage at the opening of the second part, the musicians excel, whether in the clarity of the tutti or in the intimacy of a speech between lutes or theorbos.
Guillaume Tion, Libération
In the pit, we are surprised to find the Talens Lyriques without Christophe Rousset. Baroque orchestras so embody the figure of their founder that the culture of the guest conductor is little developed. However, the alchemy with the English Laurence Cummings has visibly taken a quarter turn: under its galvanized direction, the orchestra with the plethoric workforce sounds of the fire of God, with a very British majesty, but also a magnitude, a brilliant and a tone that we are not always used to hearing from a baroque orchestra. Electrifying evening for a delirious room: it feels good.
Christian Merlin, Le Figaro
Added to this is the expert and skilled management (with a few additions here and there in the score) of Laurence Cummings, a renowned Haendelian who, for the occasion, happily takes over Lyric Talents from Christophe Rousset.
Nicolas Blanmont, La Libre Belgique
The choir, composed for the occasion, displays flamboyant energy, as does the Les Talens Lyriques orchestra, to which Haendel has reserved one of his most sumptuous scores, under the enthusiastic direction of Laurence Cummings.
Philippe Venturini, Les Echos
We felt a similar fear for Les Talens Lyriques whose last Haendelian interpretations poured into a precious meticulousness to which we are allergic. Led by a lion-like Laurence Cummings, the 42 musicians in the pit make this music roar with a consummate sense of grandiose, a fleshy continuous bass and a remarkable synchronization with the scene.
Guillaume Saintagne, Forum Opera
Director of the Handel Festival in Göttigen, specialist in ancient instruments and at the desk of the most prestigious operas, Laurence Cummings is undoubtedly at home in the Handelian universe. Under the expert baton, the ample gestures and the motivating looks of the British conductor, the orchestra pushes the excitement to its peak while delicately supporting the poetry of lamentations. Cummings provides the organ part, which requires a lot of virtuosity.
Claire de Oliveira, Olyrix
Belshazzar
Zürich Opera, November 2019
All the more pleasing is what comes out of the raised orchestra pit. Under Laurence Cummings La Scintilla makes expressive and colorful music. The proven Baroque specialist lets the orchestra speak, sing, dance, flare individual lines, others sound brittle and pale. Always in line with the text.
Bruno Rauch, ch-intercultur
Baumgarten has strong allies. Above all, the conductor Laurence Cummings, who creates a highly emotional, highly concentrated performance with the Orchestra La Scintilla.
Susanne Kübler, Tages Anzeiger
Laurence Cummings on the podium of the orchestra La Scintilla moves with flowing tempos and clear articulation at the height of today's Handel interpretation
Christian Wildhagen, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
“Orchestra La Scintilla”, conducted by Handel specialist Laurence Cummings, captivates the late Baroque affect rhetoric and sends a multitude of colours into the sound space
Torbjörn Bergflödt, Südkurier
Berenice
Linbury Theatre Royal Opera House Covent Garden / London Handel Festival (March 2019)
And the staging also incorporates the instrumentalists, with three continuo players on stage and occasionally drawn into the merry pranks. That makes Laurence Cummings’s achievement in holding together the music from the pit all the more impressive. His pacing of Handel’s ear-tickling tunes is impeccable.
Richard Morrison, The Times
the London Handel Orchestra under Cummings's direction plays with quintessential Baroque grace and verve
Michael Church, Independent
the performance here was first-rate, benefitting from the ideally intimate dimensions of the Linbury Theatre and its generous acoustic, as well as the crisp playing of the London Handel Orchestra sparkly conducted by Laurence Cummings
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph
Laurence Cummings conducts a whistle-stop, light-touch performance.
Erica Jeal, The Guardian
the London Handel Orchestra, conducted with flair by Laurence Cummings, sounds ideal in the Baroque-sized Linbury Theatre.
Richard Fairman, Financial Times
Saul
Glyndebourne Festival Opera (July 2018)
it has a brilliant precision, and a largely new cast brings fresh energy to it, galvanised from the pit by Laurence Cummings and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph
there is also the bustling Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to enjoy, conducted again by Laurence Cummings, so devoted to the composer of Saul that Handel might be his middle name.
Geoff Brown, The Times
the thrilling playing of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the focused baton of conductor Laurence Cummings.
George Hall, The Stage
the chorus is predictably excellent and Laurence Cummings and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment play the music with plenty of zest.
Richard Fairman, Financial Times
Saul
Theater an der Wien (February 2018)
Yet again the Arnold Schoenberg Chor and the Freiburger Barockorchester gave excellent performances, with Laurence Cummings drawing out the miraculous colours of this wonderful score with as much sensuality and intensity as possible.
Gerhard Persché, Opera Magazine
Musically, the evening was in the hands of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Laurence Cummings, who impressively and passionately translated the extraordinarily colorful score with the utmost precision and absolute eloquence, thus laying the foundation for a fine ensemble of singers.
Michael Wruss, öö Nachrichten
Laurence Cummings drives the flexible instrumentalists through bouncy rhythms without curtailing their freedom of phrasing. They breathe beautifully in the pit, with smooth, infinitely-variable dynamics. A Handel for intelligently sharpened ears, but also for enjoyment. "Saul" with soul.
Klassiker Welt
Laurence Cummings Repertoire
| ALMEIDA | La Guiditta |
|---|---|
| BACH | B Minor Mass |
| BRITTEN | St. Nicholas |
| CAVERLIERI | Rap. di Anima e di Corpo |
| ECCLES | The Judgement of Paris |
| GLUCK | Iphigénie en Tauride |
| HANDEL | Aci, Gallatea e Polifemo |
| MONTEVERDI | Incoronazione di Poppea |
| MOZART | Lucio Silla |
| PURCELL | King Arthur |
| RAMEAU | Dardanus |
| STRAVINSKY | The Rake's Progress |
| VIVALDI | L'incoronazione di Dario |
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