Raymond Leppard

[visualnickmos]

It has just been announced that Raymond Leppard has passed away. 11-8-1927 - 22-10-2019

[Richard Tarleton]

A great life. I heard him conduct at ROH and ENO (Figaro with Kiri te Kanawa etc., Poppea with Janet Baker) and have his fabulous Glyndebourne recordings of Orfeo ed Euridice and La Calisto....

A few years ago I took AMcG to task for being dismissive on CDR of one of Leppard's pioneering but now dated interpretations, not giving it the respect it deserved, and received an equally dismissive reply

[cloughie]

I always think of him as a contemporary of Neville Marriner - both of whom breathed extra life and vitality into baroque music prior to the HIPP craze, making many fine recordings. Now their contribution is undervalued!

[Dave2002]

Are many of his recordings still available? I may have had some tapes of the Brandenburg Concertos, but sonically they weren't great (see thread about cassette tapes). I may have a few other recordings, but I do wonder how many made it to CD, and how many were remastered to acceptable sound.

Nevertheless an influential musician and conductor who championed some early music before it became fashionable again, and the period/authentic/HIPP movement took over. He was a few years younger than a near contemporary - Thurston Dart, another enthusiast for baroque and early music, whom he outlived by a considerable number of years.

RL RIP

[cloughie]

Are many of his recordings still available? I may have had some tapes of the Brandenburg Concertos, but sonically they weren't great (see thread about cassette tapes). I may have a few other recordings, but I do wonder how many made it to CD, and how many were remastered to acceptable sound.

Nevertheless an influential musician and conductor who championed some early music before it became fashionable again, and the period/authentic/HIPP movement took over. He was a few years younger than a near contemporary - Thurston Dart, another enthusiast for baroque and early music, whom he outlived by a considerable number of years.

RL RIP

A fair number actually - a Handel box, Bach Brandenburgs and Suites, some C18th overtures. He also in 1973 became Principal Conductor of BBCNSO to broaden his repertoire.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He also in 1973 became Principal Conductor of BBCNSO to broaden his repertoire.

And it was in this role that I only heard him Live - my first Beethoven #7, and the Elgar 'cello Concerto (with a young Julian Lloyd Webber) amongst the many highlights. His recording of the Tippett Third Symphony with Josephine Barstow and the BBCSO has, coincidentally, been mention on-Forum only yesterday - a very fine performance of a then recent and very difficult piece that all performers brought off magnificently. I shall treasure these memories in higher regard than I do the Baroque recordings he made with the ECO and at Glyndebourne - pioneering for their time, and vitally important in bringing works back into the repertory in this country as they were.

[Richard Barrett]

I used to have a number of his recordings way back when... I remember Handel and CPE Bach in particular, and Monteverdi madrigals. His Monteverdi and Cavalli performances were certainly informed by a love for the music and a strong imagination, although it's a shame he put those in the service of "modernising" the music according to the character of much later styles (including cutting Poppea to less than half of its original duration!), which clearly was a conscious decision on his part, given that he was born within a couple of years of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt so he wasn't so much pre-HIPP as anti-, I think.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

so he wasn't so much pre-HIPP as anti-, I think.

Oh, very vocally so - even writing a book (published, IIRC, by Faber) making his detestation of the "fad" absolutely clear. By the late '90s he had accepted that his arguments had lost any force they might have had with younger generations of performers who were not at all interested in his ideas on 17th Century Music.

A pity he didn't record more of the later repertories - for me, there is where his "staying power" is for me. Also available is a rather wonderful Live Das Lied von der Erde with Jon Mitcheson, Janet Baker, and the BBCNSO. Rather appropriate here, I think (if perhaps somewhat ironic, given his reported disparaging comments on the composer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udfvAdwNnqQ

[Bryn]

Sorry to say that, for me, the name Raymond Leppard will always be linked to his thoroughly reactionary stance re. unions, especially the MU. and his extreme disdain for the UK Government led by Harold Wilson (and later, James Callaghan).

[doversoul1]

The name of Raymond Leppard seems to occupy a curious but important space in the development of early music performance practice. RIP.

[bluestateprommer]

The NYT has their obit for Raymond Leppard thus, and it actually addresses pretty much all the topics in this thread to date:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/arts/music/raymond-leppard-dead.html

[LMcD]

The R3 newsreader has just rhymed the first part of his surname with the French definite article (masculine) and the second part with 'charred''.

[Richard Tarleton]

Excellent obit, thank you bsp.

[BBMmk2]

Very sad to hear this. He introduced repertoire that was hitherto not known to us. RIP

[DracoM]