Richard Kapp

Richard Kapp distinguished himself among conductors of his generation through an outlook that treated music chiefly as a source of pleasure instead of a tense or overly intellectual exercise. This perspective steered him toward lighter and more accessible works, allowing him to emerge as a recognizable presence in that sunnier segment of the classical field. His name remained closely linked to the chamber ensemble he established, the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York, with whom he produced a run of popular releases that Columbia Masterworks packaged as greatest-hits collections. The earliest of these, The Greatest Hits of 1720 from 1977, ranked among the strongest commercial successes of its era. Kapp directed the orchestra in repeated New York-area performances across the years and generated recordings for several labels, among them Columbia, Vox together with its subsidiaries Candide and Turnabout, Murray Hill, and his own ESS.AY.

Born October 9, 1936, in Chicago to a family deeply engaged with music, Kapp revealed exceptional early ability at the piano yet chose to major in German history at Johns Hopkins University. After receiving his degree in 1957 he entered the Stuttgart Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, where he trained in piano, conducting, and composition. From 1960 to 1962 he worked as repetiteur at the Basel Stadttheater in Switzerland, then held the post of music director for the Opera Theater at the Manhattan School of Music between 1963 and 1965. Although he briefly pursued a law degree from New York University, he returned to music as his central vocation by founding the Philharmonia Virtuosi in 1968. The ensemble assembled players of outstanding ability, which soon allowed Kapp to secure soloists of international stature. The group presented many of its concerts at Town Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other leading New York venues.

The breakthrough success of the 1977 album lifted Kapp to wider public recognition, and later releases continued to attract notice even when they fell short of that initial sales peak. Columbia issued its final greatest-hits recording, The Greatest Hits of the 1900s, in 1986. Kapp sustained a steady schedule of recordings and performances until a cancer diagnosis in 2004 curtailed his activities. Several of his recordings have since appeared in reissues, including the 2006 ESS.AY compact disc Fasch: Three Suites for Orchestra, on which he leads Kiev Pro Musica, another ensemble with which he maintained a close association.