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Heather Harper, one of the most recorded singers of her time, made an extraordinary transition from a lyric soprano in the English pastoral tradition to a spinto-weight artist of great power and authority. While her earliest appearances and recordings brought to mind such other singers as Isobel Baillie and Jennifer Vyvyan, her prime years showed a voice that had grown in size and roundness while retaining its initial flexibility. Many critics have opined that her 1966 recording of Handel's Messiah remains unequaled. While she chose to avoid most of the Italian spinto repertory, her work in the mid-weight German operas of Wagner and Strauss was exemplary, as were her concert and oratorio performances. Harper premiered several works by both Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett and was outstanding in the works of both composers.

Harper studied at the Trinity School of Music in London and made her operatic debut as Verdi's Lady Macbeth at Oxford University in 1954 -- an undertaking that was both out of step with her initial repertory and a precursor of things to come. Her first appearance at the Glyndebourne Festival took place in 1957 when she sang the First Lady in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. She returned to the Sussex countryside in 1960 in the same role and, in 1963, added the role of Anne in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. In 1966, she sang 12 Glyndebourne performances of Handel's Jephtha with such colleagues as Richard Lewis and Margaret Price. In 1960, she sang the role of Helena in Britten's Midsummer's Night Dream at Covent Garden with a cast handpicked by the composer and subsequently recorded. The Bayreuth Festival heard her Elsa in Lohengrin in 1967, not long after she had begun a series of collaborations with Sir George Solti, who was music director at Covent Garden from 1961 to 1971. Her long delayed Metropolitan Opera debut in 1977 offered her Countess in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. She also sang her sympathetic and warm-voiced Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes there.

Harper was a distinguished singer of the concert repertory. It was to her that Britten turned in 1963 when authorities in the Soviet Union refused to grant travel permission to Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, for whom the composer had written the soaring soprano part in his War Requiem. Harper stepped in and was acclaimed for her performance. Throughout the 1960s, Harper also recorded numerous works of Handel (Theodora, Judas Maccabaeus) as well as Classical period works by Haydn (The Seasons and several masses) and Beethoven (Missa Solemnis and the Symphony No. 9). Her recorded performances of Vaughan Williams (Symphonies 1 and 3) and Delius (Mass of Life and Requiem) achieved a fine balance between magisterial distance and passionate involvement. Her participation in Solti's recording of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony alerted many to a burgeoning instrument which was ideal for the lighter German dramatic repertory. She later sang with that conductor on his recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8.

In the 1960s, Harper was brought to Chicago, where Solti was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's music director, for many celebrated performances. She repeated the Mahler Symphony No. 2, sang in Haydn's Creation, performed Bach's Saint Matthew Passion on two separate occasions and participated with Carlo Maria Giulini in Rossini's Stabat Mater. In the latter, her two electrifying, perfectly-placed high Cs attested to the size and thrust of the mature voice.

Harper sang the premieres of both Britten's television opera, Owen Wingrave and Tippett's The Ice Break.

Popp was an accomplished coloratura soprano in the early years of her career, but later as her voice changed color slightly, she moved with great success into the lyric repertoire, and still later, into the lighter Strauss and Wagner operas. She had the ideal voice and personality for Viennese operetta, and was one of the best Rosalindes and Hanna Glawaris of her time. She was also a celebrated recitalist and lieder singer, and in both recitals and on the opera stage had a charming stage presence. Her untimely death in 1993 (the same year that saw the early deaths of Arleen Auger and Tatiana Troyanos) prematurely ended a major career.

When she was a child, while she sang in local choirs, her primary interest was acting, and after high school, not being certain of what she wanted for a career, she entered the Bratislava Academy to study drama. Anna Hrusovska-Prosenkova, a voice teacher at the Academy, happened to hear her singing during a performance of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and offered her voice lessons. She began her studies as a mezzo, but as she described it, her voice suddenly developed a high upper register, and when she graduated she began her professional career as a soprano. In 1963 she made her stage debut at the Bratislava Opera as the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflaute, and also debuted at the Vienna Theater an der Wien, which led to her being engaged by the Vienna State Opera, where her first role was Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro. She had strong ties to the Vienna State Opera during her career, though she left their regular roster in 1967, and in 1979, she was named an Austrian Kammersangerin. She made her Covent Garden debut in 1966 as Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera, and her Met debut in 1967 as the Queen of the Night.

During the 1970s, she left coloratura roles for lyric ones, particularly Mozart, where she was an especially effective Pamina and Susanna, and in the 1980s, abandoning those roles, as well as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, another of her specialties, she began to add even heavier roles, including Eva in Die Meistersinger and Strauss' Arabella (both in 1983), with similar success. She died unexpectedly in 1993.

On Acanta (43 326), she recorded a number of arias from both her core Mozart and Czechoslovakian repertoire as well as from operas she sang far more rarely. Her recording of operetta arias on EMI (CDR 7243 5 69853 2 2) displays her silvery voice and charm to great advantage, and she is a vivid Susanna on the Solti "dream cast" for Le Nozze di Figaro on London (410 150-2). ~ Ann Feeney

Augér performed in both opera and Lieder, but as her career evolved, she began to focus her musical energies on the latter, preferring the intimacy of recitals to the bustle involved in staged operatic performances. Her voice was sweet-toned and pure, but also capable of a good deal of warmth and expressiveness. She was also noted as a teacher. Renée Fleming, who was one of her students, said that had she lived longer, should would undoubtedly have become one of the great Lieder teachers. Her early death cut her career short, but she left a wide recorded legacy.

She graduated from the University in California in 1963, having studied not only voice but piano and violin. After graduating, she moved to Chicago where she studied with Ralph Errole. Returning to Los Angeles, she won the I. Victor Fuchs Competition, and with it, an audition for the Vienna State Opera, where Josef Krips, the director, offered her a contract, despite her lack of stage experience. She made her operatic debut in 1967 there, as the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and made her Salzburg Festival debut in 1969. In 1970, Erik Werba invited her to perform the soprano part of Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch in a series of performances which he was producing at Wolf's own summer house. She began to focus more and more of her attention on Lieder, oratorio, and church music, and so she left the Vienna State Opera in 1974. By that point her 1975 La Scala and 1978 Met debuts were almost like afterthoughts, as she was starting to turn away from the operatic world. She came to worldwide fame when she sang Mozart's Exultate, jubilate at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York in 1986, which was seen by an estimated television audience of 300 million. (The couple left the selection of music and performers up to Simon Preston, director of music at the Westminster Abbey.) In 1993, she died of cancer.

Fortunately, she made a number of recordings during her career of Lieder, sacred music, and opera. She made an excellent Constanze in the Böhm Die Entführung aus dem Serail (DG 429 868-2), and also recorded a very fine sampling of Handel and Bach arias (Delos 3026). Her collection of Schumann Lieder on Berlin Classics (0021862BC) shows her sensitivity to nuance and emotional expressiveness.

This tall, comely and aristocratic mezzo-soprano from Australia achieved fame in the 1970s, propelled by the mentoring of Georg Solti (who engaged her for several important recordings) and her cool (but inwardly passionate) and dignified presence on-stage. Yvonne Minton was also a concert artist of the first order, appearing with many of the world's ranking orchestras under leading conductors. She was perhaps the finest Octavian of her time, that role serving as her calling card in several prominent houses. She was a dignified, consoling Angel in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, equaled only by Janet Baker.

After studying with Marjorie Walker at the Sydney Conservatory, Minton traveled to London in 1960, where she studied with baritone Henry Cummings and soprano Joan Cross (who had premiered several of Britten's stage works). Minton had already begun to make a name as a concert singer before she made her 1964 stage debut as Britten's Lucretia in a City Literary Institute production. That same year, she participated in the premiere of Nicholas Maw's comic opera, One Man Show, creating the role of Maggie Dempster. In 1965, Minton was engaged by Covent Garden and remained there for 12 seasons, during which she performed more than 30 leading roles. In 1970, she sang Thea in the world premiere of Tippett's The Knot Garden, a role she performed in the recording that followed soon after.

Apart from London, Minton achieved success elsewhere, beginning in Cologne when she sang Sesto in La clemenza di Tito in 1969. Her bold, yet touching Octavian was heard in Chicago in 1970, when critic Claudia Cassidy evoked the name of Kathleen Ferrier in describing her lustrous voice. Minton's Octavian was the only role of hers heard at the Metropolitan Opera; she made her debut there on March 16, 1973. Octavian was again the role for Minton's 1976 Paris debut. Having made her Bayreuth debut as Brangäne in 1974, Minton was engaged for Fricka and Waltraute in the controversial Bayreuth centenary Ring in 1976. London's Royal Opera House heard her Kundry in 1979. That same year, Minton took the part of the Countess Geschwitz in the premiere in Paris of the three-act edition of Berg's Lulu, completed by Friedrich Cerha. That landmark production was preserved on both audio recording and film, where Minton's tragic, beautifully sung Countess rewards both ear and eye. Following a brief retirement, Minton returned to the stage in such roles as Leokadja Begbick (a 1990 performance at Florence), Klytemnestra in 1991 in Elektra in Adelaide, Geneviève (for Chicago's Lyric Opera's Pelléas during the 1992 - 1993 season), and Countess Helfenstein (in a 1995 Mathis der Maler at Covent Garden).

Many of Minton's recordings have preserved her voice and art at their zenith. Her Octavian with Solti remains a treasurable realization, especially paired with the luxuriant Marschallin of Regine Crespin. Her Sesto with Colin Davis keeps impressive company with the likes of Stuart Burrows, Janet Baker, Lucia Popp, and Frederica Von Stade. Her quietly impressive Geneviève is buoyed by Pierre Boulez's clear conducting, while her attractive Dorabella is sunk by Klemperer's plodding pace. Two Elgar works, The Kingdom under Boult and The Dream of Gerontius with Britten conducting, are excellent, for both Minton's work and in toto.

Contralto Helen Watts was a leading member of that school of Welsh singers which came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Nurtured in a British Isles atmosphere that had turned from insularity to international performance, Watts became the leading British contralto (or mezzo-contralto) in the post-Kathleen Ferrier age. Though never wanting in artistic temperament, she was a model colleague, always well-prepared and ready to sing a fully invested performance. Her voice, of medium size though firmly focused, had a plushness that often made it seem larger than its actual size. She began by specializing in Handel and Bach, but grew artistically to become an exemplary singer of Mahler and Wagner. Watts did not neglect the works of Britten and Tippett either, performing and recording them as a part of her exceptionally extensive discography.

Watts studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and made her debut as Didymus in Handel's Theodora in a production mounted by the Handel Opera Society. She followed those performances with both Juno and Ines in Semele. She also sang in Rinaldo, an opera which she repeated at Berlin's Komische Oper and at Halle in 1961. By the early 1960s, she had established a relationship with the English Opera Group and played an important part in performances of Britten's operas, assuming the title role in The Rape of Lucretia during the EOG's 1964 tour of Russia. She sang at Covent Garden from 1965 to 1971, offering her richly vocalized Erda and First Norn, portraying Mrs. Sedley in Britten's Peter Grimes, and offering a commanding Sosostris in a revival of Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage. At the Welsh National Opera, she also performed numerous roles suitable for a contralto, among them Sosostris, Mrs. Sedley, a delicious Dame Quickly, and Lanina. At Salzburg in 1971, she was well received as Farnace in Mozart's Mitridate, Re di Ponto and in 1978, she sang a moving Arnalta in Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea with the Scottish Opera.

However busy she may have seemed in the opera world, Watts was busier still in recital and concert work. Her initial performances in Handel led to a recording of Handel cantatas and then a flood of discs of wide-ranging repertory. She made numerous recordings of Bach, paralleling her live performances throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, and America. Her years at Covent Garden coincided with the musical directorship of Georg Solti. Taken by her sumptuous voice and quality of musicianship, he employed her services for several recording projects and afforded her the international prominence she deserved. Aside from her First Norn in his Decca Götterdämmerung, he engaged her for his recordings of Mahler's Second, Third, and Eighth symphonies, all widely distributed and warmly praised. When Solti assumed the directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he brought Watts to Chicago for a series of memorable performances, including Mahler's Second Symphony and Bach's St. Matthew Passion.

Watts' Sosostris was recorded following the Tippett revival, the electronic medium greatly clarifying the composer's extremely thick orchestration and allowing her glorious singing to be heard. Watts was virtually on call to recording companies during her prime years, valued for her amazing consistency and unfussy approach to studio work. Her Angel in Elgar's Dream of Gerontius ranked with the best, and her interpretation of the contralto part in the Colin Davis recording of Handel's Messiah (including "But Who May Abide") is regarded by many as unsurpassed. Her recordings of Lieder were likewise exemplary, especially Brahms and Wolf.

As the grandson of operetta composer Walter Kollo (1878 - 1940) and the son of Willi Kollo, likewise a composer of light music, René Kollo began his career as a pop singer and operetta tenor. He made the transition to concert and opera in 1965, at Brunswick, singing the title role in Stravinsky's Oedipus rex. In 1969, he attracted international attention at Bayreuth as the Steersman in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, and in 1970 debuted at La Scala as Matteo in Richard Strauss' Arabella.

Although not yet a "dramatic tenor" (and never a true Heldentenor despite his repertoire later on), the die had been cast. Kollo sang Lohengrin in 1971 -- also his American debut role at the Met in 1976 -- then Walther in Die Meistersinger in 1973, Parsifal in Wolfgang Wagner's new Bayreuth production in 1975, and a year later Siegfried in Patrice Chéreau's centennial staging of Der Ring at Bayreuth, conducted by Pierre Boulez. For his London debut, he switched from Siegfried to Siegmund in Die Walküre, later adding Tristan to his Wagner repertoire in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's scandalous Bayreuth production of 1981. At Geneva he performed Tannhäuser for the first time in 1986, and even sang in a complete production of Wagner's Rienzi, a five-act marathon that daunted bigger voices than Kollo's.

By no means, however, was Wagner his only operatic specialty: He sang Paul in Korngold's Die tote Stadt for the Munich Radio in 1974, then Florestan in Bernstein's 1978 Fidelio at the Vienna Staatsoper for Unitel, which also preserved his Matteo in Arabella under Solti, and Bacchus in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos under Böhm. Kollo's repertory embraced Gherman in Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame, Canio in Pagliacci, Dmitri in Boris Godunov, the title role in Pfitzner's Palestrina, and at age 51 Otello in Frankfurt for the first time. At Munich in 1991 he scored a personal triumph in Britten's Peter Grimes.

As a concert singer, Kollo recorded Mahler's Eighth Symphony in Vienna with Solti and the Chicago Symphony (on tour); also Das Lied von der Erde with Bernstein in Israel. He was the tenor soloist in Bernstein's Vienna recordings of the Beethoven Ninth and Missa solemnis as well as the Ninth in Berlin for Unitel with Karajan conducting. He became a regular in Karajan's "repertory company" of the 1970s and early '80s.

Contributing to Kollo's success were his physical trimness and good looks, even in middle age, and his uncommon gifts as an actor, even after the voice had developed a widening vibrato and tonal rawness in the upper register. Though it was already evident before age 35, Kollo could minimize Wagnerian wear-and-tear by lightening his voice in frequent operetta appearances (as the Chinese prince in Das Land des Lächelns, Wiener Blut, Gräfin Mariza, Csárdásfürstin, La belle Hélène, and of course Die Fledermaus); several of these are preserved on video.

In the final period, before retiring from the stage in June 2000, he was a member of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, although he began staging operas at Darmstadt in 1986 (Parsifal), and Ulm in 1991 (d'Albert's Tiefland). For one unsuccessful season (1996 - 1997) he was director of Berlin's Metropol Theater, which specialized in operettas but had deteriorated between 1961 and the reunification of East and West. Today he calls the island of Majorca home, but claims it bores him except for the sun. Like Giuseppe di Stefano earlier on, he continues to sing light music within the current restrictions of a voice put to hard use for 30 years in the Heldentenor wars.

English baritone John Shirley-Quirk enjoyed singing and playing the violin as a child, but his true vocal talent did not become apparent until he was already studying chemistry and physics at the University of Liverpool. After several years of teaching those subjects at a British Air Force station, he began to study with the baritone Roy Henderson (1957). In 1961-1962, he sang with the Cathedral Choir at St. John's in London; during the same time he made his debut at Glydebourne in 1961 as Gregor Mittenhofer in Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers.

In 1963, Benjamin Britten recruited him to join his English Opera Group; with that group he sang the premiere performances of Britten's Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace, The Prodigal Son, Owen Wingrave, and Death in Venice (between 1964 and 1973). During that time, he also sang Guglielmo in Così fan tutte and, later, Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande at the Scottish National Opera. He created the role of Lev in Tippett's The Ice Break at Covent Garden in 1977.

Though his career centered around British venues and the music of English composers, Shirley-Quirk's career was by no means provincial. He sang his first performances of Wozzeck in St. Louis, and debuted in Berlin with Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle in 1969. Milan's Teatro alla Scala engaged him as Rangoni in Boris Godunov, and in 1974 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Britten's Death in Venice. Other important roles in his career were the Speaker in Die Zauberflöte and the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos.

Shirley-Quirk had equal success as a recital and concert singer. He was highly regarded for his interpretation of the major choral works of Bach and Elgar and sang Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn on many concerts in Europe, North America, and Australia. His recitals usually included songs by his mentor Benjamin Britten as well as those of Vaughan Williams and Butterworth.

John Shirley-Quirk's lyric baritone voice, while not large, commanded a wide dynamic and expressive range; he had a wonderful sense of phrasing. It was as a Lied interpreter that he was best known; his intellectual curiosity allowed him to explore the inner world of the works he sang. His recordings, particularly of the works of Benjamin Britten, document his fine artistry. In 1975 he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Martti Talvela had a Wagnerian bass voice of uncommon power and richness. He was noted for his expressive legato singing, and exceptional focus of tone. He also dominated the operatic stage by his sheer size: He was an immense man, standing 6 foot eight and weighing around 300 pounds. This suited him well for the most commanding roles in opera, such as Fasolt the Giant in Wagner's "Das Rheingold" and Hagen in "GÅ¡tterdÅ mmerung," Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, Sarastro in Mozart's "The Magic Flute," Verdi's Grand Inquisitor, and a role that was written for him, the revivalist preacher Paavo Ruotsalainen in Kokkonen's "The Last Temptations."

He began his adult life as a schoolteacher, but pursued vocal studies. After is Stockholm operatic debut (as Sparafucile in Verdi's "Rigoletto" he soon found himself in demand, singing all the Wagnerian bass roles, several Russian operas, and many Verdi parts. He also pursued a career as a recitalist, and was the greatest male champion of the songs of his countrymen Sibelius and Kilpinen. He regarded the condition of being granted artistic talent as carrying with it a God-given responsibility. In 1972, he accepted an invitation to become Artistic Director of the Savonlinna Opera Festival. This yearly event, little known then outside Finland, had been revived in 1967 after a festival that had been run by the great Finnish soprano A•no Ackté from 1912 to 1930. Talvela immediately transformed it into one of the top international music festivals, in which operas are staged in the impressive courtyard of the St. Olaf's Castle (or Olavonlinna).

Health problems forced Talvela's retirement from Savonlinna in 1979; he had been diagnosed with diabetes and he had other dangers to his health due to his weight. He restricted his operatic repertory to ten roles, cut back on his lucrative employment in that field, but expanded his schedule of recitals on the grounds that these were better "to bring my message." His sense of the artist's divine mission to bring something to the world was expressed in a 1986 interview. He accepted an appointment to become director of the Finnish National Opera commencing in 1992. But he was striken with a heart attack and dropped dead while dancing at the part after his daughter's wedding on July 22, 1989, one of the most shocking and regretted sudden deaths in recent operatic history. He left behind a rich legacy of recordings, including video productions, of many of his great roles. ~ Joseph Stevenson

The Vienna Boys' Choir, or Wiener Sängerknaben in German (and also known as the Vienna Choir Boys, a more direct translation), is among the world's foremost and beloved children's choirs. It is also one of the oldest musical organizations anywhere, fulfilling traditional roles that date back centuries.

The choir dates back to June or July of 1498 when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I issued a decree specifying that boys' voices should be the singers of the court chapel at the Hofburg Palace; the boys perform at Sunday masses there to this day. Composers who have written for the Boy's Choir include Mozart, Schubert, and Bruckner, and conductors Clemens Krauss and Hans Richter are among the choir's many distinguished musical alumni. At the height of Austro-Hungarian imperial power, the choir often performed secular concerts in military-style uniforms complete with daggers. That came to an end as the empire dissolved after World War I, but a chaplain at the court, spending his own money, reassembled the choir and created a new image featuring sailor uniforms.

The choir gradually gained international popularity, making the first of more than 50 U.S. tours in 1932. Its experiments with music from beyond the classical tradition began in 1931 with a recording of a piece of Native American music. In 1948, choristers began attending their own boarding school at the Augarten Palace. In 1961, the choir appeared in the Walt Disney film Almost Angels; the Austrian national emblem on their uniforms dates back to that film. The Vienna Boys' Choir has toured all six inhabited continents, with the membership of 100 singers divided into smaller groups that are on the road for three months at a time with a tutor and nurse. Together, the Vienna Boys' Choir groups perform about 300 concerts a year.

The Vienna Boys' Choir has had a long history of recordings. Its repertory has modernized somewhat under Gerald Wirth, who became its director in 2001; recordings since then have included Vienna Boys' Choir Goes Pop (2002) and A Jewish Celebration in Song (2004). The choir's Christmas albums are especially popular and include Weihnachten mit den Wiener Sängerknaben ("Christmas with the Vienna Boys' Choir," 2019). After a pandemic-era pause, the group returned in 2022 on the Deutsche Grammophon label with the album Together. It returned the following year with a live recording of its 525th Anniversary Concert at the Musikverein in Vienna; that album included an arrangement of a gospel number from the film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. By that time, the Vienna Boys' Choir had issued at least 130 albums in the digital era, plus many more LPs and 78s. ~ James Manheim

With a membership that is entirely amateur, the Vienna Singverein has developed a reputation as one of the finest choral ensembles in the world. Made up of about 200 singers, it has performed under the baton of some of today's leading conductors, including Gergiev, Ozawa, Boulez, Mehta, Muti, Barenboim, and Koopman. Such podium stalwarts from the past as Karajan and Furtwängler have not only conducted the Singverein but have held an enduring relationship with the ensemble, both in concert and on recordings. The Singverein's repertory is inclusive of a vast range, from J.S. Bach to Franz Schmidt and beyond, and while they have sung works by Verdi and Bizet and many composers outside the Austro-German sphere, they have shown a decided preference for music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, and other German or Austrian composers. Although the Singverein have sung in operatic performances and recordings, Mozart and Wagner in particular, they have generally performed concert music. The Singverein has made hundreds of recordings over the years, many of them available on such major labels as Chandos, Decca, DG, EMI, Philips, and Sony.

The Vienna Singverein was founded in 1858 as a wing of the Society of Friends of Music. The roots of the ensemble actually date back to 1812, when the Society of Friends was originally formed. The Singverein's home in the concert world is the Vienna Musikverein. Johannes Brahms served as one of the Singverein's early artistic directors. Under his baton a partial premiere of his Requiem was presented by the ensemble in 1867. The Singverein developed a long history of important premieres, including those of the Bruckner Te Deum, Mahler Eighth Symphony, and the Franz Schmidt oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln.

In the 20th century the ensemble gained an international reputation and from mid-century made numerous concert tours throughout Europe, the U.S., Australia, Japan, and elsewhere. Among the more memorable concerts abroad was a 1985 performance of the Mozart Coronation Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome under Herbert von Karajan, with Pope John Paul II present.

Karajan made over 70 recordings with the Singverein, many of them achieving broad critical acclaim. A number of these recordings have been made available, like the 2007 reissue of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony on DG (Grand Prix). Since 1991 Johannes Prinz has served as choir director of the Vienna Singverein.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of the three most acclaimed orchestras in America and one of the few serious rivals the New York Philharmonic has had in its long history. Curiously, the histories of the two orchestras are somewhat intermingled.

Theodore Thomas had organized and led orchestras in New York during the 1870s and 1880s, competing with the Philharmonic Society of New York for audiences, soloists, and American premieres of works. His orchestra did very well as a major rival to the group that would become the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra visited Chicago during several seasons, and it was intended that he would be music director of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in that city. However, in 1891, he abandoned New York entirely in favor of Chicago and arrived as the first conductor of what was then called the Chicago Orchestra. Thomas held that position until his death in 1905. In his honor, the Chicago Orchestra changed its name to the Theodore Thomas Orchestra in 1906. Six years later, the group was renamed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

It was under the leadership of Thomas' assistant, Frederick Stock, that the Chicago Symphony's modern reputation was formed. From 1905 until his death in 1942, Stock led the orchestra in decades of programs that featured not only the established classics but the American premieres of many post-romantic works. Additionally, Stock raised the level of performance and the financial status of his players and established the orchestra in a major teaching role for aspiring musicians in its home city. Its recordings were relatively few in number because the long-playing record -- central to the appreciation of classical music -- had not yet been invented, which means there is little evidence by which modern listeners can judge the work of the orchestra during this period, but some of the recordings from that era were among the best in the world at the time. Among the few available from the period on major labels are the Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 on the BMG label, featuring soloist Arthur Schnabel with Stock conducting.

Stock's death in 1942 precipitated a difficult decade for the orchestra. Apart from the general complications of World War II, it had a great deal of trouble finding acceptable leadership. Désiré Defauw lasted for only four years, from 1943 until 1947, and Artur Rodzinski (best known for his leadership of the New York Philharmonic) was in the job for only one year (1947-1948). Rafael Kubelik served three years as music director from 1950 until 1953, but his gentlemanly manner and decidedly modern, European-centered taste in music proved unsuited to the players, critics, and management -- although it was under Kubelik that the orchestra made its first successful modern recordings, for the Mercury label, many of which were reissued in the mid-'90s.

Fritz Reiner became the music director of the Chicago Symphony in 1953, beginning the modern renaissance and blossoming of the orchestra. Under Reiner, the orchestra's playing sharpened and tightened, achieving a clean, precise, yet rich sound that made it one of the most popular orchestras in the United States. The Chicago Symphony under Reiner became established once and for all as an international-level orchestra of the first order, rivaling the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony. Moreover, Reiner's arrival with the orchestra coincided with its move to RCA Victor, which, in 1954, was beginning to experiment with stereo recording. With Reiner as conductor, these "Living Stereo" recordings -- characterized by vivid textures, sharp stereo separation, and microphone placement that gave the impact of a live performance -- became some of the best-selling classical albums of all time and have since been reissued numerous times on compact disc to new acclaim from critics and listeners, more than a generation removed from their original era.

Reiner's death in 1963 led to another interregnum period, during which conductor Jean Martinon led the orchestra (1963-1968). In 1969, Sir Georg Solti joined the orchestra as its music director. Under Solti, the orchestra's national and international reputations soared, as did its record sales. Reiner had begun the process of cultivating the burgeoning audience for late-romantic composers such as Mahler, but it was with Solti that the works of Mahler and Bruckner became standard fare in the orchestra's programs, right alongside those of Beethoven and Mozart. The playing standard achieved during Solti's tenure, in concert and recordings, was the highest in the history of the orchestra. Additionally, the orchestra under Solti began a quarter-century relationship with London Records that resulted in some of the best-sounding recordings of the era. Solti's approach to performance was very flamboyant yet intensely serious -- even his performances of lighter opera and concert overtures strike a perfect balance between broad gestures and finely wrought detail, attributes that have made him perhaps the most admired conductor of a major American orchestra, if not the most famous (Leonard Bernstein inevitably got more headlines during the 1960s, especially with his knack for publicity). Solti was both popular and respected, and his tenure with the Chicago Symphony coincided with his becoming the winner of the greatest number of Grammy Awards of any musician in history (he also recorded with orchestras in London and Vienna). Daniel Barenboim succeeded Solti and served as music director from 1991 until 2006, with Solti transitioning to the post of music director emeritus. Bernard Haitink was named the orchestra's first principal conductor, holding this position from 2006 through 2010. Riccardo Muti was chosen as the tenth music director in the orchestra's history in 2010.

As with other major American orchestras, the Chicago Symphony found itself competing with its own history, especially where recordings are concerned. Reissues of its work under Reiner and Solti continue to sell well and are comparable or superior to the orchestra's current recordings in sound and interpretive detail. Even the early-'50s recordings under Kubelik were reissued by Mercury in the late '90s, while RCA-BMG and some specialty collector's labels have re-released the recordings under Stock. The recordings of Solti and Reiner leading the Chicago Symphony are uniformly excellent, and virtually all of them can be recommended. The orchestra also maintains composer-in-residence and artist-in-residence partnerships; in 2023, Jessie Montgomery occupied the former, and Hilary Hahn the latter. ~ Bruce Eder

"Imagine the universe beginning to sing and resound," Mahler wrote of his Symphony No. 8, the "Symphony of a Thousand." "It is no longer human voices; it is planets and suns revolving." Mahler was late Romantic music's ultimate big thinker. In his own lifetime he was generally regarded as a conductor who composed on the side, producing huge, bizarre symphonies accepted only by a cult following.

Born in 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia, he came from a middle-class family. He entered the Vienna Conservatory in 1875, studying piano, harmony, and composition in a musically conservative atmosphere. Nevertheless, he became a supporter of Wagner and Bruckner, both of whose works he would later conduct frequently, and became part of a social circle interested in socialism, Nietzschean philosophy, and pan-Germanism. Around 1880, he began conducting and wrote his first mature work, Das klagende Lied. Mahler's conducting career advanced rapidly, moving him from Kassel to Prague to Leipzig to Budapest; he was usually either greatly respected or thoroughly despised by the performers for his exacting rehearsals and perfectionism. In 1897 he became music director of the Vienna Court Opera and then, a year later, of the Vienna Philharmonic. Mahler's conducting career permitted composition only during the summers, in a series of "composing huts" he had built in picturesque rural locations. He reserved this time for symphonies, all of them large-scale works, and song cycles. He completed his first symphony in 1888, but it met with utter audience incomprehension. In Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), he merged the two forms into an immense song-symphony. The Viennese public largely failed to understand his music, but Mahler took their reactions calmly, accurately predicting that "My time will yet come." Meanwhile, his autocratic ways as a conductor alienated musicians. In 1901, the press and the musicians essentially forced his resignation from the Philharmonic. He married a young composition student, Alma Schindler in 1902, and they soon had two daughters. By 1907 Mahler was increasingly away from Vienna, conducting his own works, and thus he resigned from the opera as well. Just after accepting the position of principal conductor of New York's Metropolitan Opera, but before leaving Vienna, Mahler's older daughter, age four, died from scarlet fever and diphtheria, and he learned he himself had a defective heart valve. In New York, he was impressed by the caliber of talent and quickly gained audience approval. In 1909 he became conductor of the New York Philharmonic, which he found much more agreeable than opera work by this time. The following year, he had a triumphant premiere of his massive Symphony No. 8 in Munich. Despite the professional successes, his personal life suffered another blow when his and Alma's marriage began to deteriorate. They stayed together, and after he became ill in February 1911, she saw to it that he made it back to Vienna, where he died on May 18.

The conductors Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Willem Mengelberg, and Maurice Abravanel kept Mahler's legacy alive, and Mahler's are now among the most often recorded of any symphonies. His frequent incorporation of vocal elements into symphonic writing brought to full fruition a process that had begun with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, demonstrating his music's firm roots in the Germanic classical tradition. However, it was his huge tapestries of shifting moods and tones, ranging from tragedy to bitter irony (often explicitly indicated in performance directions), from café music to evocations of the sublime, that portended a century in which multiplicity ruled. ~ Rovi Staff