Charles Mackerras

Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras (Template:IPAc-en; (17 November 1925 – 14 July 2010<ref name="Australian">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>) was an American-born Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera (and its predecessor) and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.

Early life and education

Mackerras was born in Schenectady, New York, to Australian parents, Alan Mackerras and Catherine MacLaurin.<ref name="Telegraph">Template:Cite news</ref> His father was an electrical engineer and a Quaker.<ref name="Telegraph"/> Mackerras grew up in a musical family and his mother was immensely cultured.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1928, when Charles was aged two, the family returned to Sydney. They initially lived in the suburb of Rose Bay, and in 1933 they moved to the then semi-rural suburb of Turramurra.<ref name="Herald obit">Template:Cite news</ref> Mackerras was the eldest of seven children. His siblings were Alastair (1928–99), Neil (1930–87), Joan (1934–2020), Elisabeth (b. 1937) and twins Malcolm and Colin (b. 1939).<ref name=Birthday90>Simeone, Nigel. "Sir Charles Mackerras (1925–2010): A Lifetime of Gilbert and Sullivan" (Part I), Gilbert and Sullivan News, Vol. V, No. 9, Autumn/Winter 2015, pp. 12–14, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society</ref> They are descendants of the pioneer Australian-Jewish composer and musician Isaac Nathan.<ref name="Telegraph"/> Mackerras studied violin at the age of seven and later the flute.<ref name="Telegraph"/> He was setting poems to music at eight and wrote a piano concerto when he was 12.<ref name="Herald obit"/>

Mackerras initially attended his father's alma mater, Sydney Grammar School, and also St Aloysius College in Sydney.<ref name="Telegraph"/> While at Sydney Grammar, he showed a precocious talent by composing operas and conducting student performances in his early teens, but his non-musical studies suffered.<ref name="Herald obit"/> At the all-male St Aloysius, he participated in the school's Gilbert and Sullivan productions, playing the roles of Kate in The Pirates of Penzance, Leila in Iolanthe and Ko-Ko in The Mikado.<ref name=Birthday90/> Unconvinced that music was a viable profession, his parents removed the young Mackerras from temptation by sending him to board at The King's School. The school's focus on sport and discipline led the young artist to run away several times, and he was eventually expelled.<ref name="Herald obit"/> At age 16, Mackerras studied oboe, piano and composition at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music. He earned additional income from writing orchestral scores from recordings.<ref name="Herald obit"/>

Early career

By 1941, while still at the conservatorium, Mackerras began to get professional performing jobs in Sydney, partly because he was too young to join the military, while older musicians had been called up to go to the war. From 1941 to 1942, Mackerras played the oboe for the J. C. Williamson Company during one of their Gilbert and Sullivan seasons, and he was a rehearsal pianist for the Kirsova ballet company.<ref name=Birthday90/> In 1943, Mackerras joined the ABC Sydney Orchestra, under Malcolm Sargent, as second oboist and at age 19, became principal oboist.<ref name="Herald obit"/><ref name="ClassicFM">Template:Cite webTemplate:Dead link</ref><ref name="GuardianWeaver">Template:Cite news</ref> On Template:Nowrap 1947, Mackerras sailed for England on the RMS Rangitiki<ref name="Telegraph"/> intending to pursue conducting.<ref name="Herald obit"/> He joined Sadler's Wells Theatre as an orchestral oboist and cor anglais player.<ref name="Telegraph"/> He later won a British Council Scholarship, enabling him to study conducting with Václav Talich at the Prague Academy of Music.<ref name="Telegraph"/><ref name="Herald obit"/> While there, he formed a strong friendship with Jiří Tancibudek, Principal Oboe of the Czech Philharmonic, who introduced him to the operas of Leoš Janáček, thus commencing Mackerras's lifelong passion for that composer's music.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In August 1947, shortly before the couple set off for Prague, Mackerras married Judy Wilkins, a clarinettist at Sadlers' Wells.<ref name=Birthday90/> They had two daughters, Fiona and Catherine.<ref name="Herald obit"/><ref name="GuardianObituary">Template:Cite news</ref> Fiona died of cancer in September 2006.<ref>"Conductor led concert hours after death of his daughter", The Scotsman, 8 September 2006. Retrieved 16 October 2014</ref> He was also the uncle of the Australian conductor Alexander Briger<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and the British-born American conductor Drostan Hall, Music Director of Camerata Chicago.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Returning to England from Prague in 1948, Mackerras rejoined Sadler's Wells as an assistant conductor and began his lifelong association with the Sadler's Wells Opera, now English National Opera, conducting, among others, Janáček, Handel, Gluck, Bach, and Donizetti.<ref name="Telegraph"/><ref name="Herald obit"/> In the 1950s, well before the "authenticity" movement had come to general notice, Mackerras focused on the study and practical realization of period performance techniques, culminating in his landmark 1959 recording of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks using the original wind band instrumentation. In his 1965 performance of The Marriage of Figaro, he added the ornamentation in a historically informed style.

Mackerras also strongly championed the music of Janáček outside Czechoslovakia, where Mackerras himself judged his work with Janáček as his single most important legacy to music.<ref name="Moss">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1951, he conducted the British premiere of Káťa Kabanová. He was also a noted authority on Mozart's operas and those of Sir Arthur Sullivan. His ballet with John Cranko, Pineapple Poll, is an arrangement of Sullivan music with a story based on one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads. The piece premiered in 1951, soon after the expiration of copyright on Sullivan's music, and continues to be a popular light music favourite in English speaking countries.<ref name=Birthday90/> Mackerras later arranged music by Giuseppe Verdi for the ballet The Lady and the Fool. He also arranged a suite from John Ireland's score for the 1946 film The Overlanders, after Ireland's death in 1962.

He was principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1954 to 1956.<ref name="Reuters">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1962, he conducted the South Australian Symphony Orchestra in the Australian première of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos as part of the Adelaide Festival,<ref>Template:Cite web Photograph may only be viewed at the Library.</ref> with Adelaide-born Una Hale in the title role.

In 1963, he made his debut at London's Covent Garden conducting Dmitri Shostakovich's Katerina Izmailova. He directed the Hamburg State Opera from 1965 to 1969 and the English National Opera from 1970 to 1977.<ref>Phelan 1987, pp. 151, 166, 198</ref> In 1972, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York conducting Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. Mackerras worked closely with Benjamin Britten for a time until 1958, when, during rehearsals for the first performance of Britten's opera Noye's Fludde, he made comments about Britten liking the company of prepubescent boys, and Britten subsequently stopped speaking to him.<ref name="Telegraph"/><ref name="Herald obit"/>

He conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Birgit Nilsson in the opening concert of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1973.<ref name="GuardianWeaver"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Later career

Mackerras had conducted a few Gilbert and Sullivan productions for English National Opera, but his first experience as a guest conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was for Trial by Jury, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado during the 1975 D'Oyly Carte centenary season at the Savoy. He conducted Patience at the Proms in 1976, the first full-length Gilbert and Sullivan opera given in its entirety at the Proms. In 1980 he joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Trust and later its board of trustees. In the early 1980s, he conducted two New Year's Eve broadcasts of Savoy operas for the BBC, and his recordings of eight of the operas were broadcast in 1989 by BBC Radio 2 as part of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan series. He also conducted a centennial performance of Sullivan's The Golden Legend in Leeds and the first staging of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan opera at the Royal Opera House, The Yeomen of the Guard, with Welsh National Opera in 1995.<ref name=GSNews>Simeone, Nigel. "Sir Charles Mackerras (1925–2010): A Lifetime of Gilbert and Sullivan", Gilbert and Sullivan News, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society (London), Vol. V, No. 10, Spring 2016, pp. 4–7</ref> In 1980, also, he became the first non-Briton to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Last Night of the Proms.<ref name="Telegraph"/>

In 1982 Mackerras was the first Australian national appointed chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1985.<ref name="Herald obit"/> he directed the Welsh National Opera from 1987 to 1992, where his Janáček productions won particular praise. One of the highlights of the 1991 season was the reopening of the Estates Theatre in Prague, scene of the original premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni, in which Mackerras conducted a new production of that opera to mark the bicentenary of Mozart's death. As Conductor Emeritus of Welsh National Opera, his successes included Tristan und Isolde, The Yeomen of the Guard, and La clemenza di Tito (all of whose productions were brought to London). He was the principal guest conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) from 1992 to 1995 and held the title of Conductor Laureate with the SCO. He was principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1993 to 1996. During the same period, he was also principal guest conductor of the San Francisco Opera. From 1998 to 2001 he was the music director of the Orchestra of St. Luke's. From 1987, he regularly conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and was appointed Emeritus Conductor in 2007.

In 2004 he became principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. He was also principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. With the Royal Opera, he conducted productions of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Handel's Semele. Mackerras also had a long association with the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted The Makropulos Case, Káťa Kabanová, Le prophète, Lucia di Lammermoor, Billy Budd, Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute.

In August 2008, Mackerras was announced as the new Honorary President of the Edinburgh International Festival Society.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was only the second person to hold this role, after Yehudi Menuhin. As the original part of the largest arts festival in the world, the Edinburgh International Festival featured performances from Mackerras throughout six decades since his first in 1952.

Mackerras summarised his strategy for working with an orchestra as follows: Template:Quote

Mackerras was the President of Trinity College of Music, London.<ref name="ClassicFM"/> He also served as Music Advisor to City Opera of Vancouver, a professional chamber opera company led by conductor Charles Barber.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was also a Patron of Bampton Classical Opera.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> From 1999 Mackerras was a Patron of the Australian children's cancer charity Redkite.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On 18 December 2008, Mackerras served as the conductor for Alfred Brendel's final concert performance with the Vienna Philharmonic. Mackerras's last performance at the BBC Proms was conducting Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.<ref name=Birthday90/> His final public performance saw him conduct Così fan tutte at Glyndebourne in the summer of 2010.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Death

Mackerras died in London on 14 July 2010 at the age of 84, having suffered from cancer.<ref name="Australian"/><ref name="SMH">Template:Cite news</ref> Throughout his final illness, he had continued to conduct, and had been scheduled to direct two of the BBC Proms on Template:Nowrap and Template:Nowrap 2010. He was also due to conduct the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart's Idomeneo at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2010, which would have been his 56th appearance at the festival.<ref name=SMH/><ref name="BBC">Template:Cite news</ref> The director of the BBC Proms, Roger Wright, announced that a Prom would be dedicated to Mackerras's memory.<ref name="BBC"/> Wright paid tribute to Mackerras, saying "Sir Charles was a great conductor and his loss will be deeply felt by musicians and audiences alike",<ref name="BBC"/> while Rory Jeffes of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra said that Australia had "lost a living treasure".<ref name="BBC"/> Mackerras was survived by his wife, Judy (1922–2014) and their daughter, Catherine.<ref name="Telegraph"/><ref name="Herald obit"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His funeral was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden on 23 July 2010.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Recordings

Mackerras made his earliest records for EMI, in the final days of 78 rpm records, and he continued recording well into the era of compact discs in the multi-channel Super Audio CD format. In 1952, he conducted his first recording of his own Pineapple Poll ballet, which was issued on twelve sides, and subsequently transferred to LP. He later conducted two more complete recordings of the ballet.<ref name=GSNews/> Some of his early recording sessions were for Walter Legge, standing in when Otto Klemperer and other eminent conductors were ill.<ref name=Gramophone>Template:Cite news</ref> He did not always restrict himself to the classical repertoire. For example, on Template:Nowrap 1955 he recorded Albert Arlen's song Clancy of the Overflow (to Banjo Paterson's poem) with Peter Dawson and the London Symphony Orchestra.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

A smaller UK record company, Pye Records, asked Mackerras to record Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. 'We had to do that in the middle of the night, in order to get our twenty-six oboes together.'<ref name=Gramophone/> The recording, issued in 1959, was received with critical acclaim for attempting to reproduce the sound Handel would have heard, rather than the smoother orchestral arrangements usually played at that time.

In the 1960s Mackerras made the first recording of the Italian version of Gluck's Orfeo. For DG he conducted Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and for HMV a 'new-look' Messiah, with scholarly texts, small forces and sprightly tempi. He followed that up with Handel's Saul and Israel in Egypt for DG. He also recorded the first complete Roberto Devereux with Beverly Sills. In 1986, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack to Carroll Ballard's film version of The Nutcracker (better known as Nutcracker: The Motion Picture), the first full-length film version of Tchaikovsky's ballet to be given a major release in theatres.

Mackerras recorded three Mahler symphonies and all of the symphonies of Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven.<ref name="Reuters"/> Along with the Mozart operas, these recordings continue to attract critical acclaim; as do his recordings of the operas of Janáček (Decca, Supraphon, and Chandos), and major works of Handel, Dvořák, Martinů, Richard Strauss, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Donizetti, Elgar, Delius, Walton, Holst, and Haydn, among many others.

In 1953, he conducted Sullivan's cello concerto, broadcast on the BBC.<ref name=GSNews/> Sullivan's manuscript and most of the orchestra parts were destroyed in a fire, and more than three decades after that single BBC performance, in collaboration with David Mackie, Mackerras reconstructed the concerto, conducting its first performance with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall, London, in April 1986, and a recording for EMI shortly afterwards.<ref>Shepherd, Marc. "Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in D (1866)" Template:Webarchive, Discography of Sir Arthur Sullivan: Orchestral and Band Music, Gilbert and Sullivan Discography, 12 July 2009, retrieved 2 October 2015</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> For Telarc in the 1990s, with Welsh National Opera's chorus and orchestra, he also conducted Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado and The Yeomen of the Guard.<ref name=GSNews/>

Mackerras's discography also includes a recording of Britten's Gloriana, which won Gramophone magazine's "Best Opera Recording" in 1994.<ref name="Reuters"/> In 1997, Mackerras recorded Le delizie dell'amor, with the soprano Andrea Rost, for Sony Classical. His latest release for that label was Lucia di Lammermoor with the Hanover Band (S2K 63174). Other later recordings for Sony Classical include Chopin's two piano concertos with Emanuel Ax and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (SK 60771) and (SK 63371). He also recorded Dvořák's Rusalka (Decca) and Slavonic Dances (Supraphon), Josef Suk's A Summer Tale (Decca), Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 24 with Alfred Brendel (Philips), and Brahms's two orchestral serenades (Telarc). For Linn Records he recorded a two-SACD set of Mozart's last four symphonies with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in August 2007.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His final recording was Suk's Asrael Symphony, which was the composer's response to the deaths in quick succession of his father-in-law Dvořák and his wife. It was recorded not long after the death of Mackerras's own daughter Fiona.

Honours

Charles Mackerras was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1974 New Year Honours,<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> and was knighted in the 1979 New Year Honours.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref><ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> In 1978, he was presented with the Janáček Medal for services to Czech music, on stage at the Coliseum Theatre, by the Czechoslovak ambassador.<ref>Phelan 1987, p. 199</ref> In 1990, he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Hull. In 1996, he received the Medal of Merit from the Czech Republic, and, in 1997 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for services to music and Australian music.<ref name="ClassicFM"/><ref name=AC>Companion of the Order of Australia Template:Webarchive, AC, 26 January 1997, itsanhonour.gov.au. Citation: "For service to music as an operatic conductor and for the promotion of the international status of Australian music."</ref> In 2000, he was awarded the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented jointly by the Prague Society for International Cooperation and Global Panel Foundation.<ref name=HR>Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award Template:Webarchive, 3 September 2014, praguesociety.org</ref> In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal, created to mark the centenary of the Federation of Australia.<ref name=CM>Centenary Medal Template:Webarchive, 1 January 2001, itsanhonour.gov.au. Citation: "For service to Australian society and music"</ref> In 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the Queen's Birthday Honours.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> In 2005, he was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and he was also the first recipient of the Queen's Medal for Music, announced by the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall before a Proms performance of H.M.S. Pinafore.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Northern College of Music in 1999.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Legacy

The Music Room at the Bodleian's Weston Library at Oxford University was named after Mackerras when it opened in 2015.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

References

Notes Template:Reflist

Sources

• Template:Cite book
• Priest, Joan (1986). Gentlemen and Scholars: A Biography of the Mackerras Family. Brisbane: Boolarong Publications. Template:ISBN.
• Template:Cite book

External links

• Template:AllMusic
• Charles Mackerras at the Bach Cantatas Website
• Template:IMDb name
• Charles Mackerras profile and interview at ClassicsToday.com
• Charles Mackerras biography and interview at the Philharmonia Orchestra
• Interview with Charles Mackerras at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
• Profile focusing on Mackerras's Sullivan connections
• Charles Mackerras website
• Recent profile of Mackerras
• Template:YouTube
• Photos of Mackerras throughout his life
• Mackerras and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the 'Sydney Opera House Opening Concert' in 1973
• Interview with Charles Mackerras, 6 November 1986