Bach is rarely, if ever, predictable. Malcolm Proud believes "there is a feeling of inevitability about his harmonic progression, as opposed to the predictability which is often found in the music of Telemann, Vivaldi and Handel". For Proud, renowned harpsichordist and organist, Bach always feels "just right". The Baroque repertoire, which began with Monteverdi and ended with Bach and Handel, has come to dominate his musical life and he agrees he is something of a campaigner. "It was always seen as too specialist - but there is more interest in baroque music in Ireland then there was. I like playing Messiaen but . . ." It is obvious where he feels happiest.
Tomorrow evening at St Michael's in Dun Laoghaire, Proud will be performing several works from Bach's ClavierUbung as part of the annual organ series. Highlight of the programme is the magnificent chorale prelude, Aus Tiefer Not (From Deepest Despair): "It's like a six-part motet, I always think of it as a sort of cliff to be scaled." On Friday he will give another Bach recital, this time on harpsichord, as part of the Killaloe Music Festival, performing Bach's English Suite No 5, four duets and the bravura Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue - gorgeous to hear, demanding to play. Two days later, he plays Bach and Barry Guy in Leipzig, with the Swiss Baroque violinist Maya Homburger, as part of a jazz festival. (Proud has recorded Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord with Homburger.) His attention then returns to one of the most exciting projects he has been involved in - English conductor John Eliot Gardiner's plan, with the musicians of the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, to devote this year to performing all Bach's surviving sacred cantatas on the liturgical days for which they were composed, in churches throughout Europe.
Proud's enthusiasm for Gardiner's project, which marks the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, is immense. Two hundred of the cantatas survive, and Proud describes the works as "the most wonderful music and also the most rarely played. I'm not particularly religious myself but there is such a spiritual dimension to the cantatas". He adds: "It's a real shame they were not invited to perform in Ireland." Proud rejoins the cantata tour in Ansbach, Germany, on July 30th, and goes to Haddington, just outside Edinburgh, for performances on August 5th and 6th. It all began for him on New Year's Day in Berlin. Hamburg, Leipzig and, most recently, Zurich followed.
Born in Dublin in 1952, Proud is the eldest of four. His mother, Yvonne Allison, has played piano all her life. Asked when he first began, Proud says he is not really sure. "My mother says I started playing by ear when I was about three, but I can't remember." It sounds impressive but such precociousness brings its own problems. "It was a disaster. When I first started having lessons, I was so used to playing by ear I wasn't interested in learning to read music." Proud replies to most questions about himself with a surprised laugh. He has a boy's voice and is often mistaken for his son; he also has a cryptic sense of of humour.
Vague and intense, he has been the organist at St Canice's Cathedral in Kilkenny since 1985 and continues to live in hope that the organ there, a 19th-century instrument described as being in need of urgent attention some 30 years ago, will eventually be restored.
His own instrument, a hand-decorated Adlam Burnett harpsichord built in 1974, is modelled on a two-manual Jan Ruckers instrument dating from 1638. It bears the inscription, "Alive I was silent, but in death I sing sweetly" from Virgil ("it refers to the wood, not me" says Proud), and it currently resides in the gallery-like upstairs room of his small country house outside Inistioge, Co Kilkenny.
While his musical life began with the piano and he won several prizes including the competition for various piano winners at the Feis, playing Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata, he was increasingly drawn to the organ and harpsichord. It was the music which decided his instruments. "Bach is the most amazing composer. It is the most wonderful music, there is such warmth and emotion." As a schoolboy, he had sung in the choir at St Bartholomew's Church in Ballsbridge and although "I didn't have the best voice, I did have perfect pitch". His time with the choir also introduced him to the wonders of the organ, an instrument which, he says, possesses lungs. "There is no greater musical experience than playing Bach on a fine organ."
As a musician, is he conscious of belonging to the great tradition of church organists to which Bach himself remained true all his life? Proud smiles and shrugs: "Well, yes, I suppose so." No one could accuse him of being given to grand gestures and statements. He is a thoughtful character, admitting to being obsessive "in so much as wanting to do everything better". He says his school days "were not the happiest in my life" and claims to have learnt little. On arriving at Trinity College in 1969 he spent a lot of time playing an 18th-century English harpsichord there, which has since been sold. After graduating in 1973 he took his first harpsichord lessons from John Beckett. A Royal Danish Government Scholarship to the Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen followed. Having been a finalist at the Bruges International Harpsichord Competition in 1980, he then spent a year under Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam and in 1982 won the Edinburgh International Harpsichord competition. He returned to Ireland and says he did feel musically isolated in the 1980s, "but not any more".
His debut recording of harpsichord works by Bach, Byrd, Couperin, and the less well known Johann-Jakob Froberger, made at Maynooth in 1985, still sounds well. "Mmm, well, I think there are bits I would play differently now." However, he does seem satisfied with his work as a staff teacher and lecturer at the Waterford Institute of Technology. "I have had three very good harpsichord students in recent years," and he has found that preparing lectures has not only helped him develop a skill in speaking about music, it has also led him to interesting research. "You get a real sense of the social history, the geography of the world these composers lived in. When you consider that the Germany of Bach's day was just a group of little states . . ."
The paintings of the period have come to play a large part in his teaching. Proud's response to visual texture and colour is not surprising considering the richness of his playing. "Baroque music has a large element of fantasy. If you look at a score, there are no expression marks, not like Beethoven or Brahms. A lot is left to the imagination of the individual musician."
Malcolm Proud plays in St Michael's Church, Dun Laoghaire, tomorrow as part of the Dun Laoghaire organ series and in St Mary's Church, Killaloe, Co Limerick at lunchtime on Friday in the Killaloe Bach Festival.
