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Historical Performance

Head of Historical Performance:
Laurence Cummings MA, ARCM, FRCO, Hon RAM

Historical Performance Department Administrator:
Helen Thorp BA, Hon ARAM

Telephone 020 7873 7379
Email historical@ram.ac.uk

Viktor Toepelmann: Cello and Viola da Gamba (MMus)

(Picture: Photo of Viktor Toepelmann playing the Cello)

I read music at King’s College London, where I started playing the viola da gamba. After graduation, I decided to take my fascination with early music and gut strings further. The Academy was the obvious place to go to, with the brilliant teachers and its very friendly and lively historical performance department.

The course offers a huge variety of orchestral and chamber-music projects and performance opportunities with some of the most inspiring artists in the field. During the last year, I got to perform on five different instruments (thanks to the amazing collection of string-instruments housed here) in repertoire ranging from Gibbons (viol consort) to Mozart (classical orchestra). A particular highlight has certainly been the performance of a Bach cantata as part of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Escape to Bach’ festival last Christmas inside Brixton Prison— I’d never been there before!’


‘Smooth and ideally flexible playing of the Royal Academy of Music Period Instrument Baroque Orchestra under Laurence Cummings, a perfect base from which the drama could unfold. And the playing wasn’t just “authentic” and polite: Cummings built up a truly operatic head of steam’
Opera magazine, February 2003, on L’Incoronazione di Poppea