FAREWELL TO…
Peter Schreier Born 1935 Tenor and conductor
The mid-1960s saw Peter Schreier make his name as a celebrated Mozartian on the world’s highest-profile opera stages – for someone born and schooled in East Germany, enjoying such international acclaim was a comparatively rare thing. Schreier’s earliest musicmaking took place as a treble with the Dresden Kreuzchor. He became a countertenor and then a tenor, taking a keen interest in Bach cantatas and oratorios – his appearances as the Evangelist in the Passions and the Christmas Oratorio were highpoints of his career, both in concert and on record. He was a master of lieder, too, and had successful partnerships with pianists András Schiff and Sviatoslav Richter. A trained conductor, Schreier undertook a second career on the podium, specialising in Bach, Mozart and Haydn.
Harry Kupfer Born 1935 Opera director
It was in East Germany, too, that Harry Kupfer cut his teeth. Following studies in Leipzig, the Berlin-born director enjoyed success on the festival stages of Bayreuth and Salzburg. A 1978 Bayreuth production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman attracted his first high-profile critical attention and just a few years later, he was leading productions at Berlin’s Komische Oper. He remained there for just over 20 years, moving on in 2002. He collaborated regularly with Daniel Barenboim, including on an ambitious ten-year cycle of Wagner operas in Berlin. Kupfer worked right up until his death and had recently enjoyed a celebrated return to the Komische Oper with Handel’s Poro. Herbert Chappell Born 1934 Composer and producer
After penning incidental music for college plays at Oxford, Chappell found himself writing music for the new medium of television adverts. But it was as a director and producer that he truly made his mark, overseeing some of BBC Two’s most memorable classical music programming, including Omnibus films about André Previn, Frederica von Stade and Julian Bream, plus the acclaimed series The Story of the Symphony. He produced the popular video concert by The Three Tenors, filmed in Rome in 1990, and continued to compose. He wrote the music for Paddington’s First Concert in 1984 and the theme tune for the BBC’S Songs of Praise, in use up until the late 1980s.
Also remembered…
Pianist Abbey Simon (born 1920) was also a much-respected teacher. Studies with Josef Hoffmann at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute preceded a win, in 1940, at the Naumburg International Piano Competition. He went on to tour the world and sat on the juries of the Leeds, Sydney and Van Cliburn piano competitions.