On 18 November last year at Sage Gateshead, Roger Norrington left the concert stage for the final time. A programme devoted to his favourite composer, 'Joe's the guy' Haydn, brought the curtain down on an illustrious career that had totally changed the way we listen to music. Thanks largely to Norrington's benign radicalism, we now take almost for granted historically accurate orchestral layouts, authentic instruments and playing techniques, flowing tempos, aerated textures and senza vibrato (without vibrato, 'that wobbly stuff').
Looking back 60 years to when it all began with the Schütz Choir and London Baroque Players, I wonder whether Norrington had always seen himself as a musical crusader. 'In fact, I really didn't have any idea where it was going to go,' he smiles. 'I was 28 when I formed the Schütz Choir, and at that point I was thinking in terms of being a busy amateur musician conducting, singing and playing. There was absolutely no thought of my building a career out of it. My formative musical experiences included seeing Furtwängler and Beecham conduct just after the War, and singing under Klemperer. I happily accepted all those slow tempos - indeed, I thought they were really rather wonderful!'
Then he discovered Schütz quite by chance and began researching everything he could lay his hands on. Almost as a bit of a gas,' he recalls, 'in 1962 we put on an all-Schütz concert at St Bartholomew's London, and to my amazement and delight it was very well received by the critics. Over the next ten years we performed a vast quantity of early music, much of which had no central performing tradition associated with it - so we had to invent one!'
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Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.
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Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction. It's a dimension of music-making that once was integral to many a British holiday experience, yet now has all but vanished. The tide went out, you might say, on the professional seaside (or pier, or spa) orchestra many decades ago. In their glory days, though - perhaps a quarter-century on either side of 1900-these ensembles were everywhere, from Bridlington to Eastbourne, New Brighton to Worthing, Blackpool to Bexhill-on-Sea, Cleethorpes to Brighton... the list is astonishing.
Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?
As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?
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The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
Federico Colli
\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
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What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock
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Young musicians may be physically fit, but with age come the advantages of wisdom and experience
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As The Sixteen celebrates its 45th birthday, founder Harry Christophers speaks to Andrew Stewart about directing a choral powerhouse
