Described as one of the most important Spanish harpsichordists of his generation, Ignacio Prego is the founder and artistic director of Tiento Nuovo, a Madrid-based ensemble recently awarded the prestigious DIAPASON D’OR for their recording Charles Avison: Concerti Grossi (Glossa).
Mr. Prego has established an intense performing career on both sides of the Atlantic, with concerts in the most important cities in North America, Asia, and in the vast majority of countries in Europe and South America. He made his harpsichord solo debut at the 2023 Utrecht Oude Muziek in the Netherlands. Other venues include Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum and the Frick Collection in New York, the National Gallery in Washington DC, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the Esplanade in Singapore, the Palacio de Euskalduna in Bilbao and Teatro del Canal and the National Auditorium in Madrid; and early music festivals such as the ones in Berkeley, Boston, Seville (FeMAS), Vancouver, Chiquitos, Santander International Festival, FIAS, etc. He regularly collaborates with musicians such as Steven Isserlis, Monica Huggett, Nic McGegan, Harry Bicket, Nuria Rial, Hiro Kurosaki, and Maurice Steger, among others, including performances as a soloist with The English Concert in New York and the Portland Baroque Orchestra in the Oregon Bach Festival. In February of 2022 he made his debut as conductor with the Navarra Symphony Orchestra, playing with them as soloist a few days later in Francis Poulenc’s Concert Champêtre at the Bilbao Musika-Musica Festival.
First Prize winner at the 2012 Westfield International Harpsichord Competition, Mr. Prego has worked as a professor and resident artist at Yale University in the USA and has given masterclasses at various American universities, as well as in Costa Rica, Peru, Chile and Spain. He is currently an early music professor at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid.
Prego has recorded for the Glossa, Verso and Cantus labels Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Partitas and the Complete French Suites, among others.
His new recording, Napoli Inedita (Aparté) leading Tiento Nuovo and alongside countertenor Xavier Sabata and soprano Alicia Amo, has received widespread acclaim.
Mr. Prego is recipient of the 2005 AECI Grant (International Cooperation Spanish Agency), the 2009 CajaMadrid Foundation Grant and the 2014 The English Concert Harry Bicket Fellowship. After graduating with high honors in the Padre Antonio Soler Conservatory in Madrid, he continued his studies in the USA with Luiz de Moura Castro and Emile Naoumoff. He then studied harpsichord at Indiana University with Elisabeth Wright. In August 2012 Mr. Prego joined the Historical Performance program at the Juilliard School in New York, studying with Kenneth Weiss and Richard Egarr, and working with visiting artists such as Jordi Savall, Harry Bicket, Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Monica Huggett.