(b Oxford, 16 March 1934). English conductor. He studied at Cambridge and the RCM, sang as a professional tenor, 1962-70, and founded choirs specializing in the music of Schütz and Monteverdi. He was musical director of Kent Opera, 1969-84, conducting many performances of operas, from Monteverdi to Verdi, in period performances. With his groups the London Baroque and London Classical Players, giving performances of many repertory works of the 18th and early 19th centuries (including arresting ones of Haydn's Creation and Beethoven's symphonies), he has done much to make a wider public aware of the significance of period-style performance.
Sir Roger Arthur Carver Norrington is one of the leaders and best-known figures of the British "authentic performances" movement.
Coming from a musical family, he was a boy soprano and began studying violin at age ten. He won choral scholarship at Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature and, in addition to the required singing in the College chapel choir, played instrumental music and conducted.
He played violin and sang as a professional tenor part-time, while holding down a "day job" in publishing. He founded the Schütz Choir (named after Baroque composer Heinrich Schütz) in 1962. His turning point came when his employers sent him to work in Africa, where he couldn't continue his musical activities. He realized he missed them and decided to commit himself full-time to music.
He and the Schütz Choir gave innovative concerts, applying discoveries he and others made about performance practices of the time the music was written. When the Kent Opera was founded in 1969 he became its first Music Director, remaining in that position until 1984. While there, he introduced opera from a wide range of style periods. He gave to Monteverdi's L'incoronazoine di Poppea in his own realization, the first "authentic performances" version.
He found that professional players who normally used modern instruments were not necessarily masters of earlier-model versions of them. As others did in the 1970s, he founded a "period" or "authentic" instruments, the London Classical Players, in 1978. He had been Music Director of the London Baroque Players beginning in 1975, and wanted a similar orchestra using Classical-era instruments in music of roughly 1750 to 1825.
His performances of Beethoven, noted for striking qualities of wind playing and the rarely used faster tempos Beethoven indicated after the invention of the metronome, were revelatory and controversial. But his most revolutionary performances and recording were of Hector Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, released on the EMI label in 1989. This was among the first prominent attempts to apply "authentic performance" principles to Romantic Era music, and was a huge international hit. This led to his performances of more music of the period, often with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. (The London Classical Players disbanded in 1997.)
Norrington had already begun his famous "Experience" series at South Bank Centre in London. Each of these is a set of lectures, and discussions, and performances closely examining a single work or group of works in their historical context.
Norrington did not become an exclusively early-music or period instrument musician. He works with modern orchestras, both full sized and of chamber dimensions. He has been Associate Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony, and Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta (1985-1988), and Musical Director of the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York (1990-1998). In 1997 he was appointed Music Director of the Salzburg Camerata Academica and in 1998 principal conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. He frequently conducts major orchestras and opera houses of the world.
He intends to extend his work with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to the symphonies of Bruckner and Brahms. In Stuttgart, he will concentrate on music of the 20th Century (especially British and American music not often heard in Germany), but also play the German-based Classical and Romantic repertoire "in the way we have become accustomed on period instruments," an approach that is still new to German orchestras.
After a ten-year period as an exclusive EMI artist, he now records for other labels as well, including RCA, and Decca-London, for which he began recording a complete cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies. ~ Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide
Norrington is best known for performances of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music using period instruments and period style. He is a member of the historically informed performance movement. Norrington has advocated a limited use of vibrato in orchestral performances[1], which has brought him both acclaim and criticism[2]. He has followed Ludwig van Beethoven's metronome markings in his symphonies[2], some of which are thought by most conductors to be too quick to be practicable throughout the whole length of movements. He has conducted recordings of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Berlioz, and Brahms on period instruments.[3].
With his wife, the choreographer Kay Lawrence, he formed in 1984 the Early Opera Project to complement his concert work in period-style performance, beginning with Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Maggio Musicale in Florence that year, and touring Britain in 1986
