Christopher Hogwood is one of today's most internationally active conductors and a highly successful recording artist for London/Decca Records. In his fourth season as principal guest conductor of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Mr. Hogwood takes the podium for four weeks of 1995-96 subscription performances. Mr. Hogwood first led the Chamber Orchestra in 1986 and served as its director of music from 1988-92. Among his many accomplishments with the SPCO, he led the Chamber Orchestra on its highly successful 1990 European tour to Switzerland, Holland, Liechtenstein, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Italy.

Mr. Hogwood's programming with the SPCO, as well as other leading international orchestras, is especially characterized by intriguing juxtapositions of old and new - for example, Classical and Neo-Classical repertoire, including Bach, Martinu, Tippett, Stravinsky and several special commissions.

In a highly successful collaboration with London/Decca, Mr. Hogwood and the SPCO have released recordings of works by Stravinsky and his Baroque antecedents, as well as by Bizet and Gounod, and a disc featuring the works of Czech composer Martinu. In 1994 Hogwood and the SPCO collaborated on a recording featuring Tippett's Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli alongside the Corelli works that inspired it.

Since founding Britain's Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) in 1973, Christopher Hogwood has gained international recognition as a pioneer in the field of "authentic" music making - but the adjective is one of which he is wary, and he is the first to reject any suggestion that his performances seek to make categorical pronouncements about a "correct" way of playing music of the Baroque and Classical periods. "Historically informed" is the description he prefers - and the same principle can be applied throughout his very broad conducting activities, which are not restricted to early instrument ensembles or to purely Baroque and Classical programs.

With The AAM Christopher Hogwood has a busy schedule of concerts worldwide and a celebrated catalogue of recordings for London/Decca Records on the L'Oiseau-Lyre label. Alongside ongoing recording projects such as the complete Haydn symphonies and a cycle of Mozart piano concertos with Robert Levin, he has also made his mark in the field of television and video, including an ambitious program of Handel operatic arias with Kiri Te Kanawa and The AAM.

Mr. Hogwood is artistic director of Boston's Handel & Haydn Society and of the National Symphony Orchestra's annual Summer Mozart Festival in Washington, D.C. He is also active as an opera conductor, both in opera recordings with The AAM for Decca and as a regular guest of Australian Opera, with whom he conducted last season.

Mr. Hogwood has written a number of books, including an enormously successful biography of Handel. He enjoys a fine reputation as a harpsichordist, both in concerts and in a distinguished series of recordings, and is a successful and popular broadcaster on a wide range of musical topics. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from - the University of Keele, is a Fellow of Jesus and Pembroke Colleges, Cambridge, and holds International Professorships at the Royal Academy of Music and King's College, London.

Christopher Hogwood lives in Cambridge and is an enthusiastic collector of porcelain. He possesses a number of fine keyboard instruments, ranging from a 16th-century Italian harpsichord to a 19th-century piano, once the property of Weber.