Rudolf Kempe

Rudolf Kempe was born in Niederpoyritz, near Dresden, in June 1910, the son of a journeyman painter. He studied oboe at the Dresden Orchestra School from 1924 and joined the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra as principal oboe in 1929. His conducting career began in Leipzig in 1935, and through the war years he held conducting posts at Chemnitz and Weimar before being appointed principal conductor of the Dresden Staatsoper in 1949.

He held the principal conductorship of the Bavarian State Opera from 1952 to 1954 and then resigned to pursue an international guest career — at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, Bayreuth, and as principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1961 (in succession to Beecham) until 1975. He held the chief conductorship of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1975 until his death. He was particularly associated with the Strauss repertoire — his complete cycle of the orchestral works with the Dresden Staatskapelle remains the reference recording — and with the Wagner stage works.

Kempe died unexpectedly in Zurich in May 1976, at sixty-five, while preparing his next BBC Symphony season. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his work with British orchestras across the 1960s and 1970s.