In 1976 the fortepianist Richard Burnett, who has died aged 90, opened the Finchcocks Living Museum of Music in Goudhurst, Kent. For the next four decades it was home to more than 100 antique keyboard instruments and their music, realised by established performers – or by anyone who turned up. This was previously unheard of. Other museums disapproved, though some eventually copied the idea, and Melvyn Tan was among the pianists who drew direct inspiration for the course of their careers from Dick’s pioneering philosophy.
He and his wife, the writer Katrina Hendrey, had bought Finchcocks, an early Georgian manor house with 13 acres, in 1970 and ran it together. It was then in a shocking state, but provided workshops for Adlam Burnett, the firm that Dick ran with Derek Adlam, building replicas and restoring instruments with a gifted team of craftsmen until 1980.
