Elizabeth de la Porte

Elizabeth de la Porte was born in South Africa at Johannesburg on 15/09/1941, the daughter of William James Tomlinson and his wife, the singer Betsy de la Porte. For her schooling she attended Kingsmead College in Johannesburg and for her piano studies she went to Adolph Hallis and for Bach and theory to Stefan Zondagh. She became something of a prodigy and was in her mid-teens when she played the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto for a South African Radio Broadcast; however her strongest affinities always lay with J S Bach. When she won the University of South Africa’s Overseas Scholarship it was for her piano performance of Bach’s C minor Partita.

Her scholarship led to three years at Vienna (the Vienna Academy) where her principal teachers were Josef Dichler and Hilde Langer-Rühl. In Vienna she became properly acquainted with the harpsichord and the influence of Nikolaus Harnoncourt who was currently establishing the Concentus Musicus Wien. She went on to the Royal College of Music London where her teachers included Kendall Taylor (piano) and Thornton Lofthouse (harpsichord). She now resolved to concentrate on the harpsichord, and she extended her studies further with Jane Clark and Rafael Puyana.

She made her harpsichord debut at the Purcell Room in 1972. During the 1970s she went on to perform in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, as well as the her native South Africa, and United Kingdom. She played all Bach’s French Suites at a special series at St. John’s Smith Square in London, and managed something special for the 1970s with an all Couperin recital for a capacity audience in the Purcell Room. She made several appearances on BBC Television. During her public appearances at that period, both in the UK and Europe (Vienna, Geneva etc), she was acclaimed for a wide-ranging repertoire that included Böhm, Rameau, Scarlatti and Handel, but above all for her playing of Bach and his six Partitas for solo harpsichord.

Her first record (Vinyl-disc) was the “Elizabeth de la Porte Collection” for Ted Perry, then at Saga Records. He and Saga also issued her famous record of Bach’s Italian Concerto and French Overture, together with the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue. Her set of the six Partitas were also put out by Ted Perry after he had gone on to found Hyperion. All these Bach recordings have been successfully transferred to CD for London Independent Classics, director Jan Hart.

Health difficulties resulted in her early retirement from public performance, but in July 2003 she made a rare return, joining her son and his Baroque Group Extraordinaire for Bach’s C major Two-Harpsichord Concerto at St Sepulchre’s Church in the City of London. She now concentrates on her teaching at the London Royal College of Music Juniors, which she finds particularly rewarding, and at St Edmund’s and the Junior King’s School, both at Canterbury. She married Dr Paul Dawson-Bowling in 1966, and they have three children. She lives with her husband at Faversham in East Kent.

Source - London Independent Records - Press Statement