When Sir Roger Norrington returned to life

The outstanding English conductor, a trailblazer in period-instrument orchestras, died today at the age of 91.

Along with Christopher Hogwood and John Eliot Gardiner, Roger captured the imagination of new audiences with performances that were at once authentic and edgy, fresh and inquisitive. Unlike his fellow pioneers, he was neither arrogant nor greedy. In rehearsals and recordings he consulted at all times with his musicians, engaging with their opinions as much as his own.

The son of a vice-chancellor of Oxford University, he was comfortable with all forms of intellectual inquiry. His worldly knowledge was extensive and he wore it lightly. His tolerance for the less intelligent verged on the saintly.

When I recorded a Lebrecht Inteview with him for BBc Radio 3, he taled movingly about facing death in the 1990s, afflicted by an incurable blood cancer. Referred to an alternative therapy in the US, he survived not just intact but reinvigorated. The BBC, for reasons I understood, deleted this segment. It would have aroused too much controversy of a non-musical nature. But I still regret its omission.

You can hear the final cut here.

Away from period orchestras, he was music director in Stuttgart and Zurich, always leading by persuasion and richly loved by audiences.

Roger was a warm, sane, collegial man, utterly lacking in malice, a joyful companion.

He will be sorely missed.

Except by an American Youtube caster who called him ‘complete worthless dreck’.

Always good to look in a mirror before venturing opinions of this sort.

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