Norrington/ Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 28th January 2020
“Ta-daaaaaa!” There’s a wonderful publicity photograph of Sir Roger Norrington, holding his hands aloft as if a magician unveiling a new trick. The two fortissimo Ds punched out by the entire orchestra at the start of Beethoven’s Second Symphony are the aural equivalent: “Listen to this!” In the 1980s, Norrington was at the forefront of applying historical performance practice to music from the Classical and Romantic eras on instruments of the period, performances and recordings that shocked the musical world and made even modern instrument orchestras re-evaluate the way they played composers like Beethoven.
Sir Roger Norrington
© Manfred Esser
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