Rudolf Kempe

Rudolf Kempe ranks among the most underrecognized conductors active during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Although he cultivated a loyal audience in England, broader international recognition eluded him, owing in part to management, promotion, and recording strategies that lacked sufficient boldness. Too prominent to remain a niche favorite yet insufficiently famous to attain celebrity status, Kempe survives in memory chiefly as a conductor for connoisseurs, admired for the force of his artistic personality rather than any personal mystique.

He began studying the oboe in childhood, appeared with the Dortmund Opera, and in 1929, while still in his late teens, joined the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra as first oboist. His conducting debut took place in 1936 at the Leipzig Opera; the success of his performance of Lortzing’s Der Wildschütz prompted the company to engage him as a répétiteur. Kempe served in the German army throughout World War II, although his postings largely avoided frontline combat; in 1942 he was given a musical post at the Chemnitz Opera. After the war, uncompromised by any Nazi involvement, he returned to Chemnitz as opera director from 1945 to 1948 and then moved to the Weimar National Theater from 1948 to 1949. Between 1949 and 1953 he served as general music director of the Staatskapelle Dresden, East Germany’s leading orchestra. He next assumed the same position at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1952 to 1954, succeeding the rising Georg Solti.

During these years he also accepted guest engagements outside Germany, mainly in opera, appearing in Vienna in 1951, at London’s Covent Garden in 1953, and at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1954, among other engagements. Although he conducted Wagner frequently, especially at Covent Garden, Kempe did not make his Bayreuth debut until 1960. In the opera house he devoted particular attention to balance and texture, earning the gratitude of singers for the care he took on their behalf.

Kempe’s work made a strong impression in England, and in 1960 Thomas Beecham appointed him associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. Following Beecham’s death the next year, Kempe became the orchestra’s principal conductor; after its reorganization he served as artistic director from 1963 to 1975. He also held the post of chief conductor with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra from 1965 to 1972 and with the Munich Philharmonic from 1967 until his death in 1976. During the final year of his life he formed a close association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Interpretively, Kempe functioned as something of a German Beecham. He was most effective—lively, incisive, warm, and expressive without the slightest trace of self-indulgence—in the Austro-Germanic and Czech repertory. Opera enthusiasts particularly value his readings of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, and Ariadne auf Naxos. His most substantial recorded achievement, produced during the last four or five years of his life, was the extensive EMI series of Richard Strauss’s orchestral works and concertos performed with the idiomatic Staatskapelle Dresden. These recordings circulated only sporadically outside Europe during the LP era, but EMI reissued them on nine compact discs in the 1990s.