In honour of pioneering period performance conductor Sir Roger Norrington, who died on 18 July 2025 at the age of 91, we republish his final interview with BBC Music Magazine, as he announced his retirement in 2022...
Sir Roger Norrington... a pioneer of historically informed performance
On 18 November 2021 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!’
Discovering Schütz... and inventing a performing tradition
Then he discovered Heinrich 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!’
Meanwhile, in 1969, Norrington began a fabled period with Kent Opera, conducting around 400 performances in a vast range of repertoire, including seven productions with Jonathan Miller. ‘I learned a lot of my trade conducting this marvellous ensemble of young singers and orchestra, five nights a week,’ he beams. ‘You know it’s true what they say: there simply is no training for a conductor quite like working in the opera house.’
Roger Norrington... moving away from slow, ponderous tempos
Having developed a performing style for the early Baroque, Norrington moved swiftly onto Bach and Handel: ‘My moment of epiphany was hearing Harnoncourt conduct the B minor Mass, and I felt instantly this was the way to go. I had sung in interminably slow performances of the St Matthew Passion that would pulverise you into submission by the end of the opening chorus.
I also remember playing under Colin Davis in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, when he insisted during rehearsals that during the slow movement “you must suffer”. Of course, when I moved onto the Classical period with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, I realised that you don’t have to suffer at all, but rather you have to dance!’
Discovering period instruments... and taking nothing for granted
Fortunately, around that time a new generation of young musicians interested in playing early instruments began to emerge from the colleges, bringing with them all manner of exotic sounds and techniques. ‘It was a matter of physically finding our way and rediscovering the essence of this glorious repertoire from the inside,’ Norrington enthuses. ‘It had always struck me that a musician’s job should be to try and get as close as possible to the composer’s original intentions, and here we were doing just that at the cutting edge of interpretative endeavour, but with a centuries-old repertoire.’
Looking back to the heady days of the London Classical Players (LCP), founded by Norrington in 1978, there was an excited awareness that musicians couldn’t go on simply recycling old performing habits, typified by his groundbreaking disc of Schumann’s ‘Rhenish’ and Fourth symphonies. ‘We had a whale of a time making that recording,’ Norrington agrees, recalling the 1989 Abbey Road sessions. ‘It was really exciting because the process was truly creative.
If you just follow in the footsteps of the Master, you are effectively being dutiful. But when you rethink virtually every parameter and take absolutely nothing for granted, everything is up for grabs. The Schumann was particularly rewarding, as so many conductors seemed to struggle with his music. I remember the first time we played through the opening movement of the “Rhenish”, it just sounded wonderful. All those apparent “difficulties” with Schumann’s scoring seemed to melt away.’
Sir Roger Norrington... dealing with establishment resistance
At first there was a great deal of resistance from more established musicians, who would ‘cling onto the traditional way of playing as though it was the Old Testament’, Norrington playfully despairs. ‘But the younger generation of players (and listeners) were beginning to sit up and take notice.
That said, it got harder the further we travelled in time – our rethinking of Beethoven was accepted fairly early on, but as we moved though the Romantic period towards Brahms, Bruckner and – especially – Mahler, old, firmly entrenched ideas took longer to shift. When we recorded Brahms’s first two symphonies with the LCP, despite their being among the best things we’d done, at the time they simply didn’t catch on. But I’m glad to say that when I conducted them at the Proms a couple of years back, the reviews were more along the lines of, “Now this is how Brahms should be played!”’
Changing attitudes... mainstream orchestras adopt historically informed playing
Then things began to change – instead of being seen as the ‘enemy’ within, traditional orchestras gradually realised the game was up and invited Norrington along to help guide them. This in turn inspired a new wave of orchestras playing in a historically informed manner, and a generation of conductors emerged who took at least some of these ideas on board. All this happened in little more than a decade.
‘As there weren’t all that many period instrument orchestras around at the time,’ he reasons, ‘it dawned on me that virtually all we had learned was transferable to a modern outfit. I worked initially in America, but then Europe caught on in a big way, including the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, with whom I did 26 operas and concerts – within no time, they were playing familiar repertoire completely differently. Above all, the exciting thing is to be making music – the historical stuff is like the extra vitamins, helping you drive things along.’
Roger Norrington... the war on vibrato
Norrington was at first happy to allow modern orchestras to use vibrato; then, from around 2000, he only allowed its sparing use, as would have been the practice when most of the music was composed. ‘The resulting sound is so much more beautiful,’ he says; ‘if you don’t have vibrato, you have to phrase, instead of providing this kind of acoustic central heating. But, of course, you can’t persuade everyone. One reviewer described my recording of the Mahler Fifth Adagietto as “like making love to a corpse”. But to my ears the sound is incredibly pure.’
Norrington’s work with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular created new soundworlds, reinvigorating the sonorities obtainable from a modern orchestra. One also sensed he was keen to bring audiences and orchestras closer together – to get them interacting more in a collective act of celebration.
‘Absolutely. I remember a review of Haydn’s Creation I gave in London in which the writer said that “Norrington doesn’t just want the audience to enjoy it, he insists on it!” I recently gave an all-Mozart programme in Carnegie Hall and invited the audience to applaud individual movements if they feel so inclined, and they went absolutely mad. It wasn’t for our benefit, but the composer’s, and one could sense them cheering the music on, as if to say “Yes, that’s right!”’
Sir Roger Norrington... his final studio recording
Norrington’s final studio recording features violin sensation Francesca Dego and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing Mozart’s complete music for solo violin and orchestra (divided into Volume 1 & Volume 2). ‘In effect, this was a statement of intent as to how I feel Mozart should sound on a modern orchestra. Francesca is so naturally gifted – she takes nothing for granted and is very receptive to new ideas. She was absolutely determined to get everything right, and so we had several get-togethers just poring over the finer details. She brings a special poetry to the music, and her own decorative fantasy, which was genuinely extemporised on the spur of the moment in the studio; she has such a tremendous appetite and enthusiasm, so it was wonderful to go out on such a high note.
An incredible career... and 'an incredible privilege'
‘Looking back, I feel very lucky to have had so many years of life-enriching music-making. What an incredible privilege it has been to have been given the chance to rethink the music of all these great composers. And it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – once the lid is off, there’s no going back. Now that particular box has been opened, hopefully subsequent generations will continue to probe and ask the really important questions as to what this music is really all about.’
So is this really it, or can we expect any comebacks? ‘Oh no – I’m finished now. I really think that at 88, that’s enough. Now I have more time, I occasionally listen to my recordings of pieces I used to conduct from memory, and to be honest, I wonder how on earth I did it!’
