Extra Tracks

Below are tracks from our library that never made it onto one of our compact discs. They can be downloaded here as high quality 320kbs AAC encoded (MP3) files. Those originating on 78rpm discs are raw and no attempt to clean up the surface noise had been made although we have removed some loud cracks and bangs. Please note the previews are compressed files so the sound is not as good as that on the whole track.

Tracks can be downloaded from this page,
price GBP 0.95 each

Purchasers of tracks have unlimted personal use but must not pass or sell on to third parties nor broadcast without prior permission from PPL

Rudolf Kempe (1910-1976)

Kempe was born in Dresden and studied the oboe. In addition to oboe, he played the piano regularly, as a soloist, in chamber music or accompanying, as a result of which, in 1933, the new Director of the Leipzig Opera invited Kempe to become a repetiteur, and later a conductor, for the opera. During the Second World War Kempe was conscripted into the army, but instead of active service was directed into musical activities, playing for the troops and later taking over the chief conductorship of the Chemnitz opera house. In 1960, Kempe became Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic (RPO), chosen by the orchestra's founder, Sir Thomas Beecham, whom he succeded as their Artistc Director. In the final months of his life, Kempe was the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The opening concert of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts on 16 July 1976, in which he was to have conducted his BBC forces in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, became a memorial concert for him following Kempe's death in Zurich aged 65. One of the great unsung conductors of the middle twentieth century, Rudolf Kempe enjoyed a strong reputation in England but never quite achieved the international acclaim that he might have had with more aggressive management, promotion, and recording. Kempe is perhaps best remembered as a connoisseur's conductor, one valued for his strong creative temperament rather than for any personal mystique. His relaxation from the pressures of conducting was to engross himself with his model railway.

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