At its height in the 1980s, the early music revival was regarded by many as virtually synonymous with the Academy of Ancient Music and Christopher Hogwood, who has died at the age of 73. Established in 1973 with instruments of the baroque period, under Hogwood's direction the AAM examined aspects of historical performance practice with scholarly rigour, paving the way for the achievements of other contemporaries such as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM was at this time one of the most frequently recorded period ensembles, soon moving from the baroque era into the classical, to record the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, the complete Mozart piano concertos (with Robert Levin) and a wide range of other music.
Hogwood had been a continuo player for Neville Marriner's prolific Academy of St Martin in the Fields and a founder member, with David Munrow, of the Early Music Consort, but he finally managed to blaze his own trail with the foundation of the AAM, and by the 1980s had achieved superstar status in the classical sphere, dubbed "the Karajan of early music" on coming third in the 1983 Billboard chart, behind Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa but ahead of any other conductor. Invited to conduct symphony orchestras in America, he was popular with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, and invariably sold out at New York's Lincoln Centre.
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