Alfred Gross
Biography Alfred Gross
Alfred Gross
The harpsichordist, clavichordist and fortepianist Alfred Gross studied school music, church music (organ with André Luy, Lausanne Cathedral) and musicology (Ludwig Finscher, Georg von Dadelsen and Ulrich Siegele) at the Hochschule für Musik Saar conservatory, Saarland University and the University of Tübingen in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After the A examination, he turned to historical keyboard instruments and studied harpsichord with Henk Boumann (Musica Antiqua Cologne), Don Franklin (Pittsburgh) and Gustav Leonhardt (Amsterdam). Concerts have seen him travel to numerous European countries and the USA.
Alfred Gross recorded Handel’s organ concertos on a claviorgan with the Südwestfunk Radio Orchestra for the Koch International label. For Amati Records, he produced the series “Du clavecin au fortepiano” (“From harpsichord to fortepiano”) and recorded C. P. E. Bach’s “Sonatas, Fantasies and Rondos for Connoisseurs and Enthusiasts” for the Beyer-Records label. CD recordings of keyboard music from the court orchestra of Maximilian I (Organum Classics) and works by Ludwig van Beethoven, played on a grand piano by Dieudonné & Schiedmayer (Stuttgart, 1816) for the Schiedmayer Foundation in Wendlingen, date from 2019 and 2020.
Alfred Gross was a harpsichord teacher at the Esslingen University of Sacred Music (later Tübingen), at the University of Tübingen (together with Ulrich Siegele) and at the University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart (on behalf of Jon Laukvik).
Alfred Gross spent the winter of 2015 at the legendary Stanford University in California, where the Music Department afforded him the opportunity to extensively study playing techniques on a Cristofori fortepiano. To bid farewell to his new-found friends of early music, he gave a much-acclaimed concert on this instrument in Knoll Hall.
In 2016 – Froberger’s commemorative year – Alfred Gross was a welcome guest at various concert series and gave with lectures on Froberger’s sound symbolism. For publication in the Encyclopaedia of Renaissance Music, he wrote articles on stringed keyboard instruments and also published essays on matters of tempo design, and most recently an article on the subject of “C. P. E. Bach and the Clavichord”. He regularly reviews books and sheet music from the field of early music for the “Die Tonkunst” music magazine. His seminal essay entitled “In 26 Noten-Fällen ziemlich deutlich vor Augen und Ohren geleget - Symbolik, Abbildung und Nachahmung in Frobergers Cembalomusik” (Laid clearly before eyes and ears in 26 note cases – symbolism, illustration and imitation in Froberger’s harpsichord music) was published in 2020 in the Yearbook of the Society for Music History Baden-Württemberg.
