Roland Wilson

Cornetist Roland Wilson built the bulk of his professional life in Germany at the helm of the long-running ensemble Musica Fiata. Both as soloist and director he has specialized in the brass-dominated idiom of the early German Baroque that took its cue from Italian precedents.

Born in Leeds in 1956 (some accounts give 1951), Wilson began trumpet studies at London’s Royal College of Music before shifting his focus to the cornett; in doing so he became part of Britain’s first cohort of musicians formally educated in historical performance. He continued his training at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and subsequently settled in Germany. Musica Fiata was established in 1976, after which the group quickly secured engagements with vocal ensembles seeking period-instrument accompaniment for German Baroque repertoire. Among these projects were recordings with the Kammerchor Stuttgart of major Heinrich Schütz works and, later, Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine. Wilson created his own vocal complement, La Capella Ducale, in 1992.

Further releases have encompassed both well-known and little-explored instrumental and vocal pieces from the early Baroque in Germany and Italy, including music by Giovanni Gabrieli, multiple albums centered on Samuel Scheidt, and works by Antonio Bertali, Kaspar Forster, and Johann Philipp Förtsch. The ensemble’s discs have appeared on CPO, MDG, and with increasing frequency on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. Over time the chronological scope of the repertory has widened; in 2018 Wilson directed Musica Fiata and La Capella Ducale in a CPO recording of the Johannes Passion formerly ascribed to Handel and now credited to Georg Böhm. Two years later the same forces issued a reconstruction of Heinrich Schütz’s opera Dafne. By 2022 Wilson’s discography exceeded thirty titles. He has also pursued instrument-making and extensive investigation into performance practice and the construction of early wind instruments, regularly contributing to academic conferences and symposia on these topics.