Staff Profile

Born in New York City, Hilary Metzger received her BA magna cum laude in music from Yale University while simultaneously studying cello with Also Parisot at the Yale School of Music. She obtained a Doctor of Musical Arts at the State University of Stony Brook studying with Timothy Eddy, cellist in the Orion String Quartet. Thanks to a US government Fulbright award, and support from the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris, she came to France to study baroque cello with Christophe Coin and David Simpson, graduating with a unanimous premier prix from the Paris Conservatory in 1994. She has been based in France since then, performing with many internationally known period instrument ensembles that a focus on Classical and Romantic repertoire.

Dr Metzger is principal cellist of Anima Eterna, (Jos van Immerseel, Midori Seiler), Teatro Nuovo (Will Crutchfield), Opera Fuoco (David Stern) and also a regular member of Orchestre des Champs Elysées (Philippe Herreweghe). She also frequently performs chamber music with musicians from these and other ensembles, and has been invited throughout Europe, the US and Asia for recitals, lectures and masterclasses on issues concerning harmonic cello playing as well as Classical and Romantic cello performance practice more generally. 

For the past ten years, Dr Metzger has been studying harmonic cello accompaniment from both from a historical and a practical/artistic perspective. She has also analysed the language in written performance instructions from late 19^th century and early 20^th century musicians and compared these documents with early recordings made by the same performers.

 In 2020, she received a residency research grant from the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, BE to administer a questionnaire on how secco recitatives are accompanied by continuo cellists around the world today. In 2025 she received a two-year Marie Curie post-doctoral research grant from the European Commission to investigate how historical gesture, acting and declamation in later secco recitatives (1740-1840) influence the improvisations from the continuo team. This grant goes through Newcastle University where Larry Zazzo is her supervisor.

Dr Metzger comes from a family of three generations of teachers. She has many decades of extensive, varied teaching experience in Conservatory, University, as well as masterclass or summer course settings. During her research grant at Newcastle University, she is on leave from her positions as professor of baroque cello and chamber music at the Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villeurbanne and at the pôle Aliénor, a Formation Supérieur de Musique et Danse in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. She is also on the faculty of the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique in Saintes, France, a program which offers masters degrees in Classical and Romantic performance practice.

Since 2010, Hilary Metzger has been artistic director and conductor of Orchestre Cryptonique, an orchestra that unites professionals, amateurs and students of all ages and backgrounds; many musicians come with members of their own family.  Once or twice a year, during one intense weekend, they rehearse and perform in concert pieces from the great symphonic repertoire of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. For the past seven years, Orchestre Cryptonique has joined forces with the chorus Tintoretta, so that musical family members who do not play an orchestral instrument are also given the chance to participate in these events. @OrchestreCryptonique on Youtube.

• Articles

  • Metzger H. 'Untangling the webs of intrigue and influence concerning changing norms of musical pitch' Book Review of Fanny Gribenski, Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science & Politics, 1859-1955 (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Ad Parnassum : A Journal of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music 2025, 23(44), 107-116.
  • Metzger H. Comparing Secco Recitative Accompaniment by Contemporary Cellists and Cellists in the 19th Century: A Study of Social and Cultural Assumptions. Performance Practice Review 2024, 23(1), 1.
  • Metzger, H. Touches of sweet harmony: orchestral cello and bass playing in Rossini’s day’. American Rossini Society 2019, Vol 5, no 15.

• Book Chapters

  • Metzger H. The Performance Preferences of Victor Herbert: A Case Study in Comparative Techniques of HIP Analysis. In: George Kennaway, ed. New Perspectives on the 19th-Century Cello. Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2026. In Press.
  • Metzger, H. National Styles in Lower String Accompaniment of Secco Recitatives in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. In: Livio Ticli, ed. Figured Bass Accompaniment in Europe. Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2023, pp.139-164. In Preparation.
  • Metzger, H. Le Duo violoncelle piano, clefs d’une approche historiquement informée’. In: Mélanie Guérimand, Murile Joubert, et Denis le Touzé, ed. in Le Duo Violoncelle Piano, approches d’un genre. Microsillon Editions, 2017, pp.15-54.

• Digital or Visual Media

  • Seiler M, Koepp K, Granero L, Metzger H. Hidden in the Crackle of Old Recordings A New Approach to Authentic Romantic Performance. Mechelen, Belgium: Evil Penguin TV, 2025.
  • Metzger H, Lawson M, Fraser A. Corri's performance instructions in Purcell's Bess of Bedlam. www.belcantorediscovered.org, 2025.
  • Kapor A, Metzger H. Francesco Maria Veracini, Violin sonata in a minor op1, no.2. San Bruno, California: YouTube, 2024.
  • Rincon A-M, Metzger H. Rincon & Metzger record Handel's Figlio d’alte speranza on phonograph at AHRC-funded symposium. San Bruno, California: YouTube, 2023.