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Raymond Leppard was among the most important and prolific British conductors of the 20th century, identified for many years by his work with the English Chamber Orchestra. He was a scholar and a noted film music composer, and both as scholar and performer, he played a major role in the revival of Baroque music worldwide.

Raymond John Leppard was born in London on August 11, 1927, but grew up in Bath. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he studied viola and harpsichord, the latter an unusual course at the time. While at Trinity College, he conducted choirs and the Cambridge Philharmonic Society, and after graduating in 1952, he gravitated toward conducting. He formed his own Leppard Ensemble and gave a concert with it at London's Wigmore Hall in 1952. He often conducted the Goldsbrough Orchestra, which in 1960 was renamed the English Chamber Orchestra. Leppard was also noted as a harpsichord recitalist, but he did not transfer the ethos of historical performance to his orchestral groups; such a thing would have been rare for most of his career. He did, however, expand the role of the harpsichord in the continuo realization in Baroque chamber music, often drawing notice for his lively accompaniment role.

Leppard became a lecturer in music at Trinity College in 1957, rising to the position of Director of Music before leaving his post in 1968. By that time, Leppard's career as a film composer was well underway; among his credits was the score to the classic Lord of the Flies (1963). His activities as a conductor of Baroque opera also expanded in the 1960s, fueled in part by his work as an editor: he made editions of then little-known Baroque operas, including Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, which he conducted at England's Glyndebourne Festival in 1962. His opera editions, like his orchestral performances, did not seek to reflect period practices, and certain of their features, such as their modern-style orchestrations, were criticized by some musicologists. The editions, however, remain in use and continue to exert influence. Leppard was conductor of the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra from 1973 to 1980, and later in his career he was increasingly active in the U.S. After a 1969 debut with the Westminster Choir and New York Philharmonic, during which he played a Haydn keyboard concerto on the harpsichord, he made conducting appearances at the Santa Fe Opera (in Cavalli's L'Egisto) and, in 1978, at the Metropolitan Opera (in Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd). Leppard served as conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1984 to 1990, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1987 until the early 2000s. He built that group into one of the few U.S. orchestras specializing in Classical-period music.

Among the general record-buying public, however, it was Leppard's work with the English Chamber Orchestra that was best known. He made at least 170 recordings, many on the Philips and Koss labels, and centered on, but not exclusively, involving music of the Baroque and Classical era.

Leppard remained active well into the 2000s decade, continuing to live in Indianapolis. He died there on October 22, 2019, at age 92. ~ James Manheim

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is a central institution of the British classical concert scene, performing major repertory works, British standards, contemporary music, and more. Especially on recordings, the group has also engaged with music from beyond the classical sphere.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra was formed in 1932 in response to a consensus that London's major orchestras, lacking strong artistic leadership, were inferior to those in Germany and even the U.S. So conductor Sir Thomas Beecham assembled a crack membership of 106 players, and the new orchestra was successful from the start. Beecham steered the group through financial difficulties at the beginning of World War II before resigning for health reasons and due to conflicts over the ensemble's artistic direction. Postwar conductors included Eduard van Beinum (1947 to 1951) and Sir Adrian Boult (1951 to 1958); the latter inaugurated an active recording program, releasing albums that remain standards to this day.

In 1966, Bernard Haitink became the orchestra's principal conductor; his tenure, lasting until 1979, was longer than that of any other conductor of the group until Vladimir Jurowski. The orchestra renovated a disused church, renamed it Henry Wood Hall, and began to use the space for rehearsals and recordings in 1975. Haitink's successor was another giant, Sir Georg Solti, who served as principal conductor from 1979 to 1983 and continued as conductor emeritus afterward, often appearing and recording with the orchestra. Solti was succeeded by a trio of Germans, Klaus Tennstedt in 1983, Franz Welser-Möst in 1990, and Kurt Masur in 2000. Welser-Möst officially installed the orchestra as the resident ensemble of the Royal Festival Hall, which remains its main concert venue.

The orchestra has also had numerous guest conductors over the years, and these have been responsible for many of its crossover releases. Although not as active in this field as the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic has made high-visibility film soundtrack recordings. These include soundtracks for such films as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), The Fly (1986), and the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, as well as the anthology Academy Award Themes (1984). The orchestra has released albums devoted to the music of progressive rock bands Pink Floyd and Yes, and as far back as 1959, it released the album Hawaiian Paradise. In 2011, the London Philharmonic recorded 205 national anthems in preparation for the London Olympic Games of the following year. The orchestra's album releases, classical and otherwise, numbered 280 by 1997 and has increased by well over 250 albums since then; in the year 2001 alone, the orchestra released 21 albums. The London Philharmonic established its own LPO label in the mid-2000s decade and has issued large amounts of music, both classical and not, including Genius of Film Music: Hollywood Blockbusters 1980s to 2000s, in 2018.

In 2007, the London Philharmonic was in the forefront of taking advantage of the wave of talented Russian musicians who had emigrated to the West, installing Vladimir Jurowski as principal conductor. He remained in the post until 2020, becoming the orchestra's longest-serving conductor and leading the group in a 2021 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand"). In 2020, Karina Canellakis became the orchestra's first female principal guest conductor. Jurowski was succeeded in 2021 by Edward Gardner, who became the group's first British principal conductor for decades. ~ James Manheim

Hughes Cuénod was sometimes referred to as "the tenor without a voice," which is quite untrue. He never claimed to have a beautiful voice, but he created his own important niche in our musical lives.

Cuénod began his vocal studies as a baritone, but with his teacher's help worked the voice to a highly cultivated tenor. At first he sang primarily light music and cabaret songs, but in 1928 he sang in the French premiere of Krenek's Jonny spielt auf. His career took a change in direction when he began to sing early music under the direction of Nadia Boulanger. Performances of Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo and Monteverdi madrigals brought him a reputation as an early music specialist, but he was equally at home with the music of his contemporaries. He sang in the premieres of Le Diable boiteux by Francaix and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Cantata, and Threni. Cuénod sang many character roles in operas by Richard Strauss, Giuseppe Verdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Claudio Monteverdi, and Leos Janacek among others. He was one of the few tenors to sing the Astrologer in Rimsky-Korsakov's Le coq d'Or with all its high phrases. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut at the age of 85 as the Emperor in Puccini's Turandot (becoming the oldest person ever to debut at the Met!). He relished making a complete character in just a short period of time on-stage. He was a regular visitor to the Glyndebourne Festival between 1954 and 1977 singing in operas by Stravinsky, Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, Mozart, Monteverdi, Ravel, Cavalli, Tchaikovsky, Massenet, and Janácek.

Besides continuing to sing well into his eighties, Cuénod gave master classes and coached singers around the world. He did not teach voice, but rather taught the performer how to find their way of interpreting the song or opera at hand.

The voice of Cuénod was certainly not your typical tenor. It was thin, reedy, and very pure. The lack of sensuous beauty required the listener to concentrate on the text and the meaning of music. He was an excellent musician, which was why he was the favorite of so many composers. He simply tried to lay the music out as the composer intended.

Cuénod made many recordings over the years. The earliest important recordings are of Monteverdi madrigals. In the early LP era, he recorded a series of discs of vocal music of the pre-Baroque era. Later there were recordings of songs by Schubert, Fauré, and Debussy which have been reissued (LYS 342/3). He has also taken part in recordings of L'enfant et les sortileges, Ariadne auf Naxos, Oedipus Rex, Les contes d'Hoffmann, L' Ormindo, Le nozze di Figaro, Benvenuto Cellini, and the St. Matthew Passion. With Hilde Rossel-Majdan, he recorded the complete Schemelli-Liederbuch of Bach. His recordings of Stravinsky's music are required listening for any devotee of that composer.

Jane Berbié became one of the most popular French mezzo-sopranos of the middle part of the twentieth century. She had a distinctive, saucy, and playful stage presence that made her a natural for ingenue parts and "trousers" roles in comic operas.

Her small French hometown is near Toulouse, where she studied at the Conservatory. She won prizes not only for singing, but also for some of the more academic and theoretical musical subjects.

Berbié was well known as a concert and recital singer, and excelled in a wide range of repertory. She was very early among important singers to add early Baroque repertory such as songs of Monteverdi to her programs, but French nineteenth-century song, plus songs of Roussel, Ravel, and Satie were among the most important.

She made her operatic debut in two roles in Ravel's opera L'Enfant et les sortiléges at La Scala in 1958. She participated in two recordings of the opera, including the classic Lorin Maazel recording on Deutsche Grammophon, in which she sang the roles of the Sofa, the Shepherdess, the female Cat, and the Squirrel. Her signature role was likely that of the lively young wife, Concepción, in Ravel's L'heure espagnole, which she also recorded on DG with Maazel.

She joined the roster of the Paris Opéra in 1959, debuting as Mercedes in Carmen. She was highly regarded in the soubrette roles in the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas: Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Despina (Così fan tutte), and Marcellina (Nozze di Figaro). An appearance in the last-named of these was one of the most notable occasions of her career, as she was chosen to play it in the 1973 Paris Opéra performance inaugurating the administration there of Rolf Liebermann.

Once it became the fashion to return the role of Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville to its original mezzo-soprano register, Berbié excelled in this part also, and chose it for her Covent Garden debut in June, 1971. She continued to sing actively into the 1990s, and participated in an important recording of Roussel's Padmavati in the late 1980s.