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Sir Roger Norrington’s 75th Birthday Concert: Rachel Nicholls (soprano), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, The Schütz Choir of London, Terry Edwards, Sir Roger Norrington, Royal Festival Hall, London 16.3.2009 (JPr) 


Who would consider a slight oscillation of pitch to be important? This use of vibrato is believed to be an orchestral phenomenon of the mid-twentieth century and it is well known that Sir Roger Norrington has made it his life’s work to eliminate this practice from ‘historically appropriate’ performance of music earlier than this. This has allowed the word ‘maverick’ to be applied to this seemingly genial figure and certainly the Royal Albert Hall is still standing and survived the vibrato-lite Elgar he conducted in the last Proms season, despite the furore about it before and afterwards. 

Is he right, is he wrong? It’s probably an interesting experiment but it is unlikely that his one argument ‘fits all’ idea is correct. I am sure there are a variety of oral traditions and performing practices we are unaware of; the term espressivo in a score probably refers to ‘vibrato’ and apparently a number of Wagner’s scores have the strings notated with the very word ‘vibrato’. This argues against Sir Roger’s assurance that Wagner, and similar composers of the Romantic era, had never heard an orchestra use it. It all reminds me of those paintings restored at London’s National Gallery, such as Holbein’s The Ambassadors, so over-painted now that the artist’s original vision may be obscured and it was probably never that fresh and colourful in the first place. Other countries, I think of the Breughels I have seen in Vienna with sticking tape on them, are content to leave masterpieces alone with the accretions age has brought them. I feel this is applicable to music too. 

However, this, of course, is a debate for another time and place and must not detract from enjoying Sir Roger’s birthday celebrations with him. It brought together his current orchestra, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with which he is closely associated, and the Schütz Choir which he formed in 1962. 

It was a Classic-FM-style eclectic ‘history of music’ programme covering nearly three centuries from Schütz to Mahler, via Bach, Berlioz, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Elgar.

Berlioz’s Concert Overture ‘Le Corsaire’ opened the programme and had a compulsive, sparkling energy. This was a tribute to his ‘Stuttgart Sound’ and their synthesis of this modern symphonic orchestra with ‘historical performing practice’. They seem to have all the intonation and colour that is familiar to modern ears while embracing their principal conductor’s ‘no-vibrato’ thesis. The orchestras shuttled on off the platform as they shared the pieces performed but the best moments were when the rather laid-back Sir Roger conducted them and clearly enjoyed the experience. When he finished the Berlioz he spun round on the podium with a ‘well-what-about-that’ gleeful expression on his face.

Sadly when conducted by Terry Edwards the Schütz motets and aria were slightly dull and showed their age. As did a rather wan account of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1 when lead by Alison Bury (or ‘playing without conductorial help or interference’ as the ‘compère’ for the evening, Nicholas Kenyon, described it). Yet with his own orchestra the second movement of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony had a gentle charm and the finale from Beethoven’s Eroica was undoubtedly effervescent but lacked a little drama for me.

After the interval the OAE or ‘Orchestra of the Age of Enslavement’, as Sir Roger quipped, were happier with Mozart’s Overture to Idomeneo, though the Act II aria ‘Placido è il Mar’, like her Schütz aria, was rather circumspectly sung by Rachel Nicholls.

Then followed Mahler’s Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony performed in a fast time of just 8 minutes (Mahler’s 1904 score for the première has 7mins 30seconds) and as the outpouring of love to Alma it undoubtedly is. Wonders never ceased and it was clear that fleetingly Sir Roger signalled for his SRSO players to actually use vibrato. This was apparently because for two bars only Mahler suggested it as an experiment in 1910. Quite whether Mahler would have wished it to sound in part so similar to the Siegfried Idyll is another matter.

Finally – and the only music to be played in its entirety - Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Unfortunately it had an overall blandness that cannot be right. Taking this non-hackneyed approach for these intimate reflections on people in Elgar’s life lacked the dynamic range of the emotions from tenderness to rumbustuousness this music demands. Though ‘Nimrod’ (Variation IX) was suitably poignant and the final representation of the composer himself was an exuberant Wagnerian conclusion and warmly compelling. If the strings of the SRSO sounded a little dry, then there were refined contributions from the woodwinds and brass throughout this performance. 

A number of people came on stage to pay tribute to Sir Roger including Marshall Marcus, head of music at the Southbank Centre, who first met him when he was a violinist and explained how the orchestra would spend the time ‘finding out new ways of making music that were old ways of making music.’ Felix Auracher of the SRSO explained how he was a ‘good psychologist, bringing in suggestions and making ideas’ when he first began as their principal conductor in 1998 and that the players were always ‘open-minded’; jokingly he added that ‘if we knew how it was going to be we would have never started!’ For his part Sir Roger said about this orchestra that the so-called ‘Stuttgart Sound’ was ‘not just about getting rid of vibrato because many instruments in Germany do not play with vibrato anyway’ and he concluded how he ‘could not believe an orchestra can be so imaginative and free.’

Nicholas Kenyon reminded us how ‘Opera has been a vital part of Roger’s life’ and Jonathan Miller reflected how he had given him his first introduction to staging opera: ‘I told Roger I could not read music but he assured me he could.’ He praised Sir Roger for always coming to the first day of piano rehearsals ‘unlike Jurassic Park conductors’ who only arrive just before the first performance wondering why a singer is standing where they are; Miller caustically adding how he tells them ‘if you had come three weeks earlier you would know’. One ‘maverick’ fittingly singing the praises of another! It was that sort of evening, and since he is in good health now, after overcoming his well publicised bout with cancer in the earlier 1990’s, and is at the age when most conductor’s legends begin, I hope more people will be in a concert halls somewhere to help Sir Roger Norrington celebrate when his 80th comes round! 

Jim Pritchard 


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