Penelope Cave HonARAM GRSM LRAM is a prize-winning concert harpsichordist, specialising in programmes with readings and sharing her enthusiasm for the harpsichord and related early keyboards with an audience. She has recorded for the BBC and Classic FM and her solo disc, “From Lisbon to Madrid” received 5 stars from the BBC Music Magazine. Recently she has been giving a number of piano-duet recitals with Helena Brown and a Broadwood square piano.

Photo Gerald Pace

Penelope Cave is known for her inspirational courses for harpsichord, early keyboard styles and baroque chamber music, masterclasses, lecture-recitals and mixed ability workshops including Dartington International Summer School, Fittleworth, Jackdaws and Benslow. She also annually teaches abroad, (See the article on last year’s course in Portugal “Seixas in the Sunshine” in the British Harpsichord Society Newlsetter of January 2008). Her presentations include practical help on methods of sight-reading and practice as well as technical skills, style and interpretation with the use of handouts and other aids to learning. She writes & reviews for Consort and the Harpsichord & Fortepiano magazine.

Music Teacher commissioned an article on keyboard history and how to teach it, in 2002, which led to an invitation to present a lecture/workshop at the Scottish Association for Music Education Conference at Stirling University. After presenting the harpsichord class at Morley College for 18 years, Penelope Cave has continued to teach individual children and adults, a number of whom she has prepared for further qualifications and a career in music, as well as tutoring undergraduates and giving masterclasses for universities including Belfast, Southampton and Hull. In October 2003 she was asked to give a paper on Scarlatti, recently published, and to serve on the final panel with Jane Clark, at the FIMTE symposium in the South of Spain. In November 2007, she gave a paper at the 23rd Annual Conference on Music in 18th-century Britain on early piano duet repertoire.