Karl Richter

Between 1958 and 1970, a time when many conductors assumed that great music should be performed by great forces and with great reverence, Karl Richter’s interpretations of Bach’s vocal music set new standards in rhythmic discipline and textural clarity. Born at Plauen, Saxony, in 1926, the future conductor, organist, and harpsichordist was trained by the three great choir masters and Bach specialists: Karl Straube and Günther Ramin in Leipzig, and Rudolf Mauersberger in Dresden. After WWII, he was appointed organist of Bach’s church, St. Thomas’s, Leipzig, moving to Munich in 1951 as organist of St. Mark’s, a post he held until his early death in 1981. As founder of the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra (1954), Richter’s musical activity extended far beyond both Bach and Munich, with performances of 18th- and 19th-century choral and orchestral works and tours of the Soviet Union, United States, and Japan. Though a casualty of changing taste (as a player and conductor, he was skeptical about the growing interest in historically informed approaches during the 1970s), Richter’s recordings still have much to offer, especially Bach’s Mass in B Minor, recorded live in Japan in 1969.