Rebecca Pechefsky
Harpsichordist
News
New Video: José de Nebra’s Sinfonía in D Major. Possibly the first time this remarkable music has been recorded! And introducing my new spinet from Atelier Marc Ducornet
BioGraphy
Well known in the New York area, Rebecca Pechefsky has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, and the Morris-Jumel Mansion, where she and Brooklyn Baroque have performed in a yearly series. She has also been heard in the concert series of the Miami Bach Society, the Iowa Early Keyboard Society, Capriccio Baroque, and the Harpsichord Center in California, as well as in fringe concerts of the Boston Early Music Festival and the Berkeley Festival. Recent European engagements include recitals in Tallinn (Estonian Harpsichord Festival), London (Handel House), Milan (Sforza Castle), Bologna, Genoa, Amsterdam, Berlin, Basel, and Paris (Les Concerts dans les Copeaux). Among her recordings for Quill Classics are the complete harpsichord music of François d’Agincour; Bach and His Circle (JPF Music Award, Best Classical Solo Album); Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, praised in Fanfare as “excellent to the highest degree”; and Johann Ludwig Krebs @ 300. As part of the Krebs 300th birthday celebrations in Germany, she was invited to perform in Zwickau and Altenburg in October 2013, and in November 2018 she participated in a marathon celebrating Couperin’s 350th birthday at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Also committed to contemporary music, she has premiered works by Beth Anderson, Mary Inwood, Mark Janello, Graham Lynch, Frank J. Oteri, Louis Pelosi, Johnny Reinhard, David Wechsler, and Ben Yarmolinsky, and can be heard along with Elaine Funaro and Beverly Biggs on Uno, Due, Tre: New Works for Harpsichord by Mark Janello and Edwin McLean. Currently organist at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Glendale, Queens, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Erik Ryding, with whom she coauthored the award-winning biography Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere. Rebecca graduated as a piano major from Juilliard’s Pre-College program before earning her undergraduate degree at Barnard College, followed by an MA in harpsichord from Queens College and an MPhil in musicology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her piano teachers included Mary Turner, Dimitri Toufexis, and Seymour Lipkin; she later studied harpsichord with Louis Bagger, Kenneth Cooper, and Raymond Erickson, with master classes from Olivier Beaumont, Kenneth Gilbert, and Colin Tilney. Her recording of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, appeared in November 2017. She is a founding member of Ensemble Luini, an ensemble dedicated to Renaissance music and featuring lute, recorder, and virginals, as a well as a member of fhe Baroque Virtuosity trio with violinist Kinga Augustyn and lutenist Christopher Morrongiello and the harpsichordist for Opera Essentia.
Upcoming concerts
Fall 2023
Brooklyn Baroque at The Old Stone House
Friday, December 1, 7 PM The Old Stone House
Brooklyn Baroque will be starting a new series at the historic Old Stone House in Park Slope on December 1 at 7 PM, with festive seasonal music, including pieces by Handel, Telemann, LeClair, and others. Featured performers for the December concert will be Melanie Williams, flute; Andrew Koutroubas, cello; Rebecca Pechefsky, harpsichord; with a special guest appearance by Jeffrey Mandelbaum, countertenor. Admission is $25, cash or Venmo, and a holiday reception will follow the concert.
Brooklyn Baroque
Brooklyn Baroque debuted in the fall of 2000, when cellist David Bakamjian joined the long-standing duo of Baroque flutist Andrew Bolotowsky and harpsichordist Rebecca Pechefsky. Remaining core members Pechefsky and Bakamjian now collaborate with the finest early-music specialists in the New York area. Some artists they have worked with recently are sopranos Linda Lee Jones and Marguerite Krull, tenor Philip Anderson, bass-baritones Jonathan Woody and Michael Maliakel, recorder players Martin Bernstein and Gregory Bynum, violinists Jeremy Rhizor, Theresa Salomon, and Jude Ziliak, flutist Taya König-Tarasevich, oboist Sarah Davol, and the New York Classical Quartet. The ensemble is in residence at the 1765 Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan’s oldest house.
Brooklyn Baroque Returns to Morris-Jumel Mansion for the Annual Holiday Concert
For this concert Brooklyn Baroque was joined by violinist Jude Ziliak. Covid protocols were observed and a good time was had by all!
Tribute to Violinist Judson Griffin
In this Telemann Quartet from a performance at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, Brooklyn, NY (the last joint concert with Brooklyn Baroque and the New York Classical Quartet) shows the magnificent artistry of the late Judson Griffin.
Brooklyn Baroque’s Cellist David Bakamjian
Cellist David Bakamjian performs regularly as a recitalist, chamber player, and recording artist. He has played at New York’s premier concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, and has appeared on National Public Radio and WQXR. On baroque cello, he performs with a number of period instrument ensembles in the New York area, including the American Classical Orchestra, Early Music New York, Concert Royal, and the Long Island Baroque Ensemble. Mr. Bakamjian has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras on both baroque and modern cello, and has served as principal cellist for many others. With the Casa Verde Trio, Mr. Bakamjian completed six critically-acclaimed national tours as well as a month-long tour of China. He co-wrote and is featured in Evocations of Armenia, a program for solo cello and spoken word specially conceived for the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In August 2011 he and Rebecca Pechefsky of Brooklyn Baroque performed at the Villa Monteverdi in Tuscany, Italy. He taught cello and chamber music at Lehigh University for eight years and is the director of the Princeton Play Week chamber music workshops and of the Summer String-In, where he performs with the Simon String Quartet. David earned his BA at Yale University, where he studied with Aldo Parisot, and his doctorate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he studied cello with Timothy Eddy and chamber music with Bernard Greenhouse. His newest recording with Brooklyn Baroque is a program of Boismortier sonatas for cello.
Videos
Here are some recent videos; for a complete listing visit the Quill Classics channel on Youtube.
François Couperin’s Huitième Ordre
Couperin’s 8th Suite is considered by many to be his finest suite for solo harpsichord. I recorded this video using the superb acoustics at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Marine Park, Brooklyn. Special thanks to music director Michael Fontana, as always, for making these recordings possible!
Premiere Recording of Antonio Soler’s Epic Fugue
For other Soler sonatas, including some also newly recorded from the Morgan Library & Museum recently acquired manuscript, to the Quill Classics Soler Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkWklUUqkWK4MmpDjMDXOyZUXvrHthYqS
Mark Janello’s Concerto for Two
With my frequent duet partner and good friend Elaine Funaro for a video of Mark Janello’s sparkling duo, Concerto For Two, which we premiered in Montreal in 2015. Elaine commissioned the work for the Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competition.
Bach’s Partita No. 5
We recorded Bach’s 5th Partita back in December 2010, but here it is, re-released with hitherto unseen movements. This was recorded at my own Redeemer Glendale Church.
Krebs’s Italian Concerto
Johann Ludwig Krebs’s sparkling concerto in the Italian style, reminiscent of Bach’s Italian Concerto but with Krebs’s own distinctive touches. My video recording might be the first complete recorded performance on harpsichord.
For more Krebs recordings, go to the Quill Classics Krebs Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkWklUUqkWK538IecZ4QCmfrGFPimqgDb
Thomas Morley's Fantasia
Morley's magnificent Fantasia, recorded on my Flemish muselar after Ruckers, built by Garrick Dolberg. Other recordings of Elizabethan keyboard music can be found on the Quill Classics Elizabethan Keyboard Music Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkWklUUqkWK6iTXSC22BJIdQPModv3wjy
Contact
Send me a message to find out more about upcoming concerts and recordings!
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