This Friday, July 18th, Sir Roger Norrington, a pioneer, a crackling wit in the classical music scene, a researcher, a gentleman-rebel, and a wonderful musician, has passed away at the ripe age of 91. Few people are afforded to touch as many lives as positively; to strike as many chords, to resonate so considerably with so many people as did Norrington – and all of that, senza vibrato!
Norrington (OBE, CBE, Knight), born on 16 March 1934 in Oxford, to a very Oxfordian family, was a towering figure in the English and international Historically Informed Performance scene. In 1962 he founded the Schütz Choir, with which he made his first Proms appearance in 1966. In this, coming from the choral tradition (his father was in the Oxford Bach Choir, of which Norrington became the President), he followed a trajectory that was typical for HIP conductors. But (although there was a good amount of, obviously, Schütz and Monteverdi – but also Berlioz, already) he was also one of the first conductors in said scene to focus very soon on the classical and romantic periods. He did so, primarily with the London Classical Players which he founded in 1978. Before (and for six more years after) that, he spent formative years with the Kent Opera, from 1969 to 1984. (The Kent Opera was eventually nixed by the Arts Council in 1989, because, hey, why not!)
The London Classical Players eventually became a major force in HIP performance and recording, a cornerstone of the British period-instrument movement, and stacked with the many period instrumentalists that were loitering about London at the time and who also filled the seats of many of the other early music bands that would follow suit. In 1986, EMI, on its (largely forgotten) early music imprint Reflexe, had him start on the Beethoven Symphonies, which upended ears around the classically interested globe, shocking, delighting and, in a few cases, horrifying Beethoven lovers everywhere. (“Norrington’s atrocious complete symphony cycle”, D.Hurwitz) How do they hold up, almost half a century later? Well, the playing is admittedly rough, which, with some charitability, you could call: exciting. The tempi are fast but no longer that fast, in comparison. (Then again, HvK was already pretty fast, for his time) The performances definitely have a pioneer-spirit about them and reek of gasoline. But I wouldn't say they're unattractive. In some ways, they are among the most audacious Beethoven performances of the time, and a good deal of that is still transmitted.
I don’t mind if a performance is unhistorical; I do mind if it isn’t fun.Also early-on came some recordings of Haydn, which were probably my introduction to Norrington, back when I eagerly collected and listened to, whatever I could get my ears on, between the BMG Record Club and Tower Records. Hailed for their “erratic brilliance”, they still had to fight against longstanding favorites from stalwarts like Jochum and Davis, in the reviewers’ estimation. But Haydn may have been something like the godfather of Norrington’s musical adventures. The wit, humor, quirk, Puck united them, and it is not a coincidence that Norrington ended his performing career on November 18, 2021, leading the Royal Northern Sinfonia in an evening of a wildly diverse program of all-Haydn at Sage Gateshead.
While Norrington certainly researched each work and each composer painstakingly, before tackling the music, and while he held firm – even dogmatic – beliefs (especially about the absence of vibrato – here’s an op-ed of his in The Guardian: ”Bad vibrations” and one in the NYT, titled ”Time to Rid the Orchestras of the Shakes”), which opened him up to a few broadsides), his ultimate goal was always to have fun with the music; to make it entertaining. “The reason to do so is not because pure tone is ‘authentic’,” he concludes that op-ed, “but because it is beautiful, expressive and exciting.”
It is true, his ideas and his approach did not work equally well for all the music or on all the occasions he performed. Norrington, once dubbed “as stubborn and dogmatic and controversial a musician as one is likely to encounter these days” (Sudip Bose, in an article for The American Scholar, where he makes a beautiful case for Norrington), was accused of being a charlatan by some, and “just a man with a bizarre fixation ruining the music he conducts.” (This from a review in The Times from Stephen Pollard).
This kind of hyperbole always struck me as a curious mix of impotence and bluster. Things can not to be one’s liking, of course. One may, indeed, deem someone’s ideas about certain music poppycock. But clearly someone like Norrington was not out to wilfully desecrate music or ruin our enjoyment of it, whether his theories where right or wrong or the execution of it lacking. I’ve indulged in my share of hyperbole, even of that sort, but Norrington playing an Elgar Symphony or Pomp and Circumstance, is not akin to “burning torches at the gates of Buckingham Palace.” It’s just a bloody Elgar, or Beethoven, or Mahler, or (as it were) Bruckner Symphony played not to one’s liking. Switch the CD, go to another concert, you’ll hear it more to your liking. Vive la difference.
Incidentally, it was a Bruckner performance, that I first heard Roger Norrington in concert with. He was guest conducting the National Symphony Orchestra, not the most natural Bruckner Orchestra, and (reviewing it for ionarts) I approached it with some caution:
Sir Roger Norrington conducting is always an event, but when he takes on Bruckner, the Brucknerian must fear for the worst. The “worst” in this case being a playing style that conforms (or allegedly conforms) to the way these symphonies were performed during Bruckner’s time. Or, to be more precise: how this particular symphony would have been performed, had it been performed at all, since Norrington opted for the ‘original original’ version of Bruckner’s 4th – the 1874 Nowak edition that did not receive an outing in that form until 1975 with the Munich Philharmonic.It was not a great success and I felt “rather conflicted” about it. Part of the problem with Norrington’s approach was, that it depended on the absolute will and ability of his orchestras to go along with this non-vibrato approach. Even with all the will in the world, not a given with any professional orchestra, a few rehearsals cannot suffice to master this approach in a way that the music will achieve the desired effect and lift-off.
Much of this was very interesting, like seeing a favorite building from a different angle for the first time. But it was also a building where the parts didn’t quite seem to fit together, as though they were glued together just a bit off, or puzzle pieces forced to fit when they don’t quite.The London Classical Players, even if they could be a bit scrawny, in the 80s, had the will and drilling. So did the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the second major continental orchestra with which he held a position, next to the Camerata Salzburg (1997 to 2006). These willing Stuttgarters he led for 13 years and they became a vehicle for him to prove his point. He may never have fully convinced the majority of scholars – but his performance became increasingly convincing. For me, the musical triumph of this approach, came in unlikely recording success, fairly late in his Stuttgart tenure, when he put out interpretations of Bruckner’s Sixth and Mahler’s Ninth symphonies that knocked my socks off, when I heard them. (ClassicsToday’s David Hurwitz*, never a fan and vocal in trying to debunk Norrington’s vibrato-theories, called his “Stupid Mahler Ninth”.)
Norrington gives the great diffuser and comfort-smudger that permanent vibrato admittedly is, the boot, and has his modern instrument violinists, violists, cellists, and double basses hit the notes and play them clean without—literally—the wiggle room that vibrato provides, intonation-wise. Since his orchestra knows how to do that now, the sound isn’t off; instead, it’s more direct, seeming a little more strident at first, a little sharper, but certainly also more detailed and clearer… Loving this performance [doesn’t mean] being sold on his theory to the exclusion of the various other current ways of performing Mahler, but I, well… I love it. There is a zany bite and yet a plain simplicity to the music that is very refreshing, gripping, and exciting…His Bruckner Sixth is, if anything, even better (see the ionarts “Best Recordings of 2010 – ‘Almost List’”). The Stuttgarters’ sharp attacks, crisp tempi, and lean textures work much better in Bruckner’s Sixth than you’d ever guess. It’s a perfect spoil to Celibdiache’s Sixth with the Munich Philharmonic or Haitink’s stupendous Dresden performance. Norrington and the orchestra make the music sound feisty where it should, and gleam along where it may. Both recordings make Norrington’s point not by dint of ideology but his true mantra for which the HIP elements were merely the means: Music needs to sound good. Concertgoers, listeners, even those he may have infuriated on occasion, will certainly cherish his memory, his life, his enormous contribution to music, and his wonderful, smiling legacy.
* In defense of Dave: When he liked something by Norrington, even in unlikely repertoire, he would say so, although not usually without some barbs to make his general point.
P.S. A tribute from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenement.
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