Roger Norrington: a musical revolutionary bids farewell with Haydn, cheer and chat

The conductor’s final ever concert was at Sage Gateshead with the Royal Northern Sinfonia playing an all-Haydn programme. He leaves classical music changed emphatically for the better – and with less of that ‘wobbly stuff’

Not for Roger Norrington a grand and glitzy farewell in the capital surrounded by the metropolitan elite. Instead – good for him – arguably the most important British conductor of the last half century travelled north to bow out. The 87-year-old’s farewell concert took place in Sage Gateshead, directing the Royal Northern Sinfonia in an all-Haydn concert that effortlessly rolled back the years. It reminded us that this is a man who has changed classical music emphatically for the better.

Everything about the event was quintessential Norrington: the choice of Haydn, whom the conductor has described as the composer he would most like to invite – “Joe’s the guy” – to his farewell party. Then the programme: not just two of Haydn’s London symphonies, Nos 101 and 103, but Haydn English language canzonettas sung by Susan Gritton with Steven Devine at the fortepiano, a wind band march, and one of the greatest of Haydn’s string quartets, Op 76 No 5.

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