Refiner's Fire

Founded in 1973 by conductor Christopher Hogwood with the aim of energising baroque and classical music, the Academy of Ancient Music heralded a revolution in the way orchestral music is performed.

During the 1970s and 80s, the Academy surfed the digital boom in recorded music with unprecedented success, lifting period instrument performance from the fringes of 1960s counterculture and putting baroque music into the pop charts. As the classical record industry faded and 1970s radicals became the 1990s establishment, the AAM faced a new challenge: reinventing itself to meet the artistic, social, and economic conditions of a musical world transformed by its own revolutionary achievement.

Refiner's Fire is the first full-length narrative history of a British period-instrument orchestra—a comprehensive account of how this influential ensemble came into being, achieved global fame, and then remade itself, securing a future and a purpose beyond the retirement of its charismatic founder. Richard Bratby has interviewed many of those who played a role in the Academy’s foundation and progress, using their accounts to tell the orchestra’s story for the very first time.