Preethi de Silva is founder and music director of Con Gioia, and has concertized extensively in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and the Hochschule für Musik, Berlin, earning diplomas in performance and teaching, and at Yale University, where she earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. She is the winner of numerous awards and fellowships, including several from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service), a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship and the prestigious Erwin Bodky Award for early music performance. Her recordings of several volumes of keyboard works by J.S. and C.P.E. Bach, J.G. Müthel, and Mozart have received high critical acclaim. Her publications include music for harpsichord and oboe and a book published by the Edwin Mellen Press: The Fortepiano Writings of Streicher, Dieudonné, and the Schiedmayers. Awarded the Adèle Mellen Prize for distinguished scholarship, the book comprises translations of two rare German manuals (of 1801 and 1824), including one by the woman piano maker Nannette Streicher, and an unpublished notebook of two fortepiano makers. As well, she has composed works for solo harpsichord and string quartet. She is the lead harpsichordist in Con Gioia’s compact disc of Bach’s concertos for one or more harpsichords. Emerita professor of music of Scripps College, Claremont, Preethi de Silva is adjunct professor of music at Claremont Graduate University.

Selected press reviews

“… a musician of great accomplishment and imagination.”

The Daily Telegraph, London

Toccata (Germany)

“This record, which is titled Keyboard Music in the Empfindsamer Style, is an absolute knockout…. Her technical grasp and understanding of C.P.E. Bach’s music are nothing short of perfect.”

Fanfare Magazine (USA)

“The recording [with works by C.P. E. Bach and J.G. Müthel] with Preethi de Silva is among the most fascinating recordings of the Titanic label…. The interpretation is one of stupendous liveliness and virtuosity.”

Alte Musik Aktuell (Germany)

“Ms. de Silva has a profound understanding of [CPE] Bach’s idiosyncratic language, and she commands the range of dynamic control and nuance so necessary in this music.”

Early Music (Oxford, 1995)

“She moves effortlessly from wit to virtuosity to expressive or fantastic passages, rarely crossing the narrow dividing line between the expressive and self-indulgent.”

Early Music (Oxford, 1994)

“Preethi de Silva’s playing is delicate. She… uses the instrument colorfully and phrases with a refined sense of style.”

Die Welt, Berlin

“Preethi de Silva’s delicate playing, caressing each note, conveyed in the Fantasia in C Major an impressive sound spectrum, as performed on the Stein Fortepiano of 1775.”

Berliner Morgenpost

“Her performance distinguishes itself through vivid registrations with a broadly varied sound spectrum, through clarity in rhythm that also allows agogic playing, the most finely nuanced articulation and phrasing, subtle ornamentation, and an extraordinarily nuanced touch.”

Ostfriesenzeitung

“The pianist, harpsichordist, and composer captivated us through the elegant interpretation of her playing, which combined virtuosity and aesthetic profundity.”

Emder Zeitung, Emden

 “With spellbinding dexterity, and full of temperament, she played works by Georg Böhm, Louis Couperin, Jacques Duphly, Scarlatti, and Bach. She also understood admirably the art of enlivening unmeasured music with fluid ornamentation and of breathing life into the rhythm of the grave sarabandes.”

Hamburger Abendblatt

“ … a vivid and transparent interpretation.”

Die Union, Leipzig

“Especially impressive were the breathing, flowing gesture and the organic exchange between improvisatory free and strict fugal sections, which characterized the Toccata
in e-minor.”

Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin

“Inspired by analytically based tone-rhetoric, the artist played in a precise, superlative manner.”

Fränkischer Tag, Bamberg