Roger Norrington

Born in Oxford on March 16, 1934, Roger Norrington was a British conductor known for his historically informed approach to performance, particularly in Baroque, Classical and Romantic music. Son of Oxford Trinity College President Arthur Norrington, Roger Arthur Carver Norrington, he spent part of his youth in Canada during the Second World War, then returned to England to learn the violin, before studying history and literature at Clare College, Cambridge, between 1954 and 1957. A member of the choir, he also took violin and singing lessons with baritone Roy Henderson. He played in orchestras and conducted the Chelsea Opera Group, before founding the Schütz Choir in 1962. He left his job in publishing to devote himself to a career as a conductor, and spent two years training with Adrian Boult. In 1969, Norrington was appointed Music Director of Kent Opera, conducting four hundred concerts, before founding the London Classical Players in 1978, which recorded Beethoven's complete symphonies on period instruments, as well as works by Mozart, Schumann, Berlioz, Schubert and Handel. Between 1985 and 1989, he also conducted the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and, from 1990 to 1994, the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York, in addition to chairing the Oxford Bach Choir. Following the dissolution of the London Classical Players in 1997, the British conductor took over the helm of the Camerata Salzburg (1997-2007) and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (1998-2011), before his appointment to the Zurich Kammerorchester (2011-2016). During his tenure, Norrington was also invited by other phalanges, including the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. An advocate of vibrato-free playing in certain classical and romantic works, he arouses both admiration and debate in the music world. After being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (1980) and a Knight (1990), the conductor was knighted in 1997. In 2008, he took part as a member of the jury on BBC 2's Maestro, between two appearances at the Proms, opening in 2006 and closing in 2008. In 2021, Norrington retired to Exeter, Devon, where he died on July 18, 2025 at the age of 91.

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