Sir (Alan) Charles (MacLaurin) Mackerras - Life and career, Recordings, Reference

Conductor, born in Schenectady, New York, USA. He played oboe with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (1943–6), studied at the Prague Academy (1947–8), was a staff conductor at Sadler's Wells Opera (1949–53), and returned there in 1970 as musical director, having established an international reputation. Subsequent conducting posts have included the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and Welsh National Opera (musical director, 1987–92). He was principal guest conductor, Scottish Chamber Orchestra (1992–5), and with the Czech Philharmonic from 1996. A noted scholar of the music of Janá?ek, he was knighted in 1979 and made a Companion of Honour in 2003. At the 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, he was voted Most Distinguished Performer (BBC Radio 3 Listeners Award) and won a gold medal for his work with British and Czech music.

Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras AC CH CBE (born November 17, 1925) is an Australian conductor.

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.

Mackerras studied oboe, piano and composition at the New South Wales Conservatorium in Sydney and eventually became principal oboist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

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. 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.

He became principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1954 to 1956. 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 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.

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). During the same period, he was also Principal Guest Conductor of the San Francisco Opera.

In 2004 he became Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. 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.

Recordings

In 1997 MacKerras recorded Le delizie dell'amor, with the soprano Andrea Rost, Sony Classical.

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.

He has also recently recorded Dvorak's Rusalka (Decca) and Slavonic Dances (Supraphon), Suk's A Summer Tale (Decca), Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 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.

Reference

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