Charles Mackerras

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Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras AC CH CBE (born November 17, 1925) is an Australian conductor. He received a CBE in 1974 and was knighted for his services to music in 1979. 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. In 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's Birthday Honours. In 2005, he was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal and he was also the first recipient of the Queen’s Medal for Music.

Contents 1 Life and career 1.1 Early career 1.2 Later career 2 Recordings 3 Reference 4 External links

[edit] Life and career

Mackerras was born in Schenectady, New York in the United States of America to Australian parents and moved with them to Sydney at an early age. He was one of five brothers Malcolm, Colin, Alastair and Neil. They are descendants of the pioneer Australian musician Isaac Nathan.

Mackerras studied oboe, piano and composition at the New South Wales Conservatorium in Sydney and eventually became principal oboist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He settled in England in 1946. He won a British Council Scholarship in 1947, which enabled him to study conducting with Václav Talich at the Prague Academy of Music.

[edit] Early career

Returning to England, in 1948, he began his life-long association with Sadler's Wells Opera (now English National Opera), conducting, among others, Janáček, Händel, Gluck, Bach, and Donizetti. 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 Fireworks Music using the original wind band instrumentation. In his 1965 performance of The Marriage of Figaro, he added the ornamentation in authentic Mozart patterns. At the same time, as conductor of England's Sadler's Wells Opera (now ENO), he gained general recognition for Janacek as one of this century's great opera composers, and established his reputation as the world's most authoritative conductor of Czech music outside of (then) Czechoslovakia.

Mackerras has performed a wide range of repertoire, but is particularly closely associated with the operas of Leoš Janáček — in 1951 he conducted the British premiere of Katya Kabanova, which had been written thirty years earlier. He is also a noted authority on Mozart's operas (it has been said that if the scores of Mozart's operas were all somehow destroyed, Mackerras would be able to reconstruct them from memory) and those of Sir Arthur Sullivan. His Sullivan ballet arrangement Pineapple Poll (1951, just after the expiration of copyright on Sullivan's music), based on one of Gilbert's Bab Ballads, continues to be a popular light music favorite in English speaking countries. Mackerras has also arranged music by Giuseppe Verdi for the ballet The Lady and the Fool.

He became principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1954 to 1956. In 1963 he made his debut at London's Covent Garden conducting Shostakovich's Katerina Izmailova. He directed the Hamburg State Opera from 1965 to 1969 and English National Opera from 1970 to 1978. 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, but after he had joked about Britten's relationships with young boys, they didn't work together again. The events are described in John Bridcut's Britten's Children. Mackerras was a guest conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado during the D'Oyly Carte Centenary season (in 1975) at the Savoy. He later joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Trust and later its Board of Trustees.

[edit] Later career

Mackerras directed the Welsh National Opera from 1987 to 1992, where his Janácek 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 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 have included Tristan und Isolde, The Yeoman of the Guard, and La clemenza di Tito (all of which productions were brought to London). He was the Principal Guest Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, from 1992 to 1995 and 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.

In 2004 he became Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. He is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, acknowledging his expertise with Czech music. With the Royal Opera, he has recently conducted productions of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and Handel's Semele. Mackerras has also had a long association with the Metropolitan Opera and has recently conducted The Makropulos Case, Katya Kabanova and Die Zauberflöte with that company.

Mackerras's strategy for working with an orchestra is to come prepared. He has said,

I believe it's very important to edit orchestral parts explicitly and as thoroughly as possible, so that the musicians can play them without too much rehearsal. For instance, the other day I did all the Schumann symphonies with very little rehearsal at all. Because the parts were clearly marked, particularly with regard to dynamics, we were able to play them without needing to do that much preliminary work, focusing our attention on the interpretation rather than the technical business of who plays too loud or too soft.[1]

[edit] Recordings

In 1997 MacKerras recorded Le delizie dell'amor, with the soprano Andrea Rost, Sony Classical. His most recent release for that label was Lucia di Lammermoor with the Hanover Band (S2K 63174). Other recent recordings for Sony Classical include Chopin's two piano concertos with Emanuel Ax (SK 60771) and (SK 63371).

In 1986, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack to Carroll Ballard's film Nutcracker: The Motion Picture, the first full-length film version of Tchaikovsky's great ballet to be given a major release in theaters. It is performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet and features sets and costumes by Maurice Sendak.

He has also recently recorded Dvorak's Rusalka (Decca) and Slavonic Dances (Supraphon), Suk's A Summer Tale (Decca), Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 24 with Alfred Brendel (Philips), and Brahms' two orchestral serenades (Telarc). Mackerras's recordings of the complete symphonies of Mozart (Telarc), Brahms(Telarc), Beethoven (EMI), and Mahler, as well as the Mozart operas, continue to attract critical acclaim, as do his recordings of the operas of Janacek (Decca, Supraphon, and Chandos), and major works of Handel, Dvorak, Martinu, Strauss, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Donizetti, Elgar, Delius, Walton, Holst, and Haydn, among many others.

He has also conducted over a dozen full-length Gilbert and Sullivan opera recordings and, in collaboration with David Mackie he reconstructed Arthur Sullivan's "lost" cello concerto, conducting its first performance by cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall, London, in April 1986.

[edit] Reference

Biography: Charles Mackerras: A Musician's Musician by Nancy Phelan (London, Victor Gollancz, 1987).

[edit] External links

• Biography
• Discography of recordings with Sony Classical
• Profile and interview of Mackerras
• Biography and other information
• Filmography
• Profile focusing on Mackerras's Sullivan connections
• Brief biography of Mackerras
• Recent profile of Mackerras

Preceded by: Louis Frémaux

Chief Conductor, Sydney Symphony Orchestra 1982–1985

Succeeded by: Zdenek Macal