Rudolf Kempe

The German conductor RUDOLF KEMPE was born in 1910. He studied the piano from the age of six, followed by the oboe from when he was twelve. After advanced study at the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden he joined the orchestra of the Dortmund Opera as first oboist in 1928, before moving quickly on to a similar seat in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, from which he was able to observe many of the great conductors of the inter-war period in action. In 1935 he conducted an opera rehearsal and shortly afterwards found himself conducting the public performance of a light opera. He immediately decided to quit orchestral playing and to concentrate on becoming a conductor, joining the Leipzig Opera as a coach and assistant conductor. He was soon entrusted with major works from the operatic repertoire.
During World War II he enlisted in 1942 but was given leave to conduct at the Chemnitz Opera, to which he returned after his military discharge in 1945, serving as chief conductor there between 1946 and 1948. He also conducted as a guest in Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig. He subsequently succeeded Joseph Keilberth as chief conductor of the Dresden Opera in 1949 before moving to a similar post with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1952. It was with this company that he made his British debut in 1953 when it gave a guest season at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He returned to Covent Garden frequently and became a firm favourite with English audiences. He resigned from his Munich post in 1954 and worked internationally as a guest conductor, notably in Berlin, Vienna and New York as well as in London.  As his health declined during 1960, Sir Thomas Beecham offered Kempe a permanent post with his own orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, to which Kempe agreed over a hastily arranged lunch in London. Kempe took over as the Orchestra’s chief conductor following Beecham’s death the following year, remaining with it until 1975. Following the death of Hans Rosbaud he took up a parallel position with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra between 1965 and 1972, and in addition became chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra from 1967 until his death in 1976. He also served as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a short period. Kempe was greatly admired by orchestral musicians, often the hardest of critics. On the one hand, in rehearsal he was quiet and undemonstrative, rarely raising his voice, always extremely courteous and very clear about his requirements; yet in performance his extraordinary technical clarity, his musical flexibility and infallibility, and his innate sense of drama could result in readings of great power.