Roger Norrington (1934-2025)

Sir Roger Norrington – perhaps best known as a crusader against what he called the ‘modern drug’ of vibrato – has died at the age of 91.

Born in Oxford into a musical family – his father having made a considerable contribution to the Oxford University Press’s music publishing business and been a leading light in the then newly-formed Oxford Bach Choir – his own academic education began with a degree in English Literature, but he was soon taking conducting lessons with Sir Adrian Boult.

The rest, in a sense, is history, though not quite a straight line from A to B; Norrington was no mean violinist, and also spent about a decade singing as a tenor before truly gravitating to conducting. In 1969, though, he became the music director of Kent Opera and it is here that the Roger Norrington that classical music lovers will remember begins to emerge. Founding the London Classical Players, conducting English National Opera and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, a spell in the US conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke’s – and, perhaps most significantly, establishing the Early Opera Project in 1984.

‘Period’ or ‘historically-informed’ performance had already begun to capture Norrington’s imagination, and would remain his focus for the rest of his life. His curiosity about reopening questions considered closed and shelved – around the size, layout, and of course playing technique of orchestras for various types of repertoire – was insatiable, leading him to devote great time and energy to researching the topic, and this is where his notoriety as an opponent of vibrato (even in later repertoire where it was stylistically acceptable, such as Elgar and Mahler) arose. Indeed, it pursues him even in death – at the time of writing, the comments on the below video of Mahler’s famous Adagietto are almost universally scathing. It’s undeniably a profoundly different experience; judge for yourself whether it’s a valid account.

This missionary project to overhaul the sound of the orchestra was most perceptible during his time at the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra; the ‘Stuttgart Sound’, as it became known, was the direct result of Norrington’s efforts to combine modern orchestral instruments with a scrupulous faithfulness to the tenets of the historically-informed performance movement. As well as eschewing vibrato, he was open to varying the physical layout of the instruments, and took the bold step of actually believing composers – particularly Beethoven – when it came to metronome markings, rather than deciding that they must have meant something else.

Stuttgart was perhaps the one place above all where his legacy was forged – many of his acclaimed recordings were with the orchestra (which later merged with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra to become today’s SWR Symphony Orchestra). But Norrington was active all over Europe – conducting orchestral and operatic performances in London, Zürich, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Venice, Florence and more.

Norrington retired in 2021, with his final performance a concert of Haydn with the Royal Northern Sinfonia at the Sage in Gateshead. His death was announced on 18th July; his wife Kay (a choreographer with whom he worked closely on Early Opera Project productions) died last year. He is survived by his children Tom, Ben and Amy.

Sir Roger Norrington - a selected discography