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Richard Tauber Prize 2008 by Jane Avery
The Public Final Audition of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society’s Richard Tauber Prize for Singers took place on 4 June at Wigmore Hall. Britain’s longest established singing competition, the Prize was created by the Anglo-Austrian Music Society in 1950 in memory of the great Austrian tenor Richard Tauber, whose few post-war London appearances before his premature death were arranged by the Music Society.
Since then, there have been 29 awards. Finance-permitting, it is now held every two to three years, and, for the second time, the Anglo-Austrian Society offered financial support from the funds which they hold.
The competition is for outstanding young singers, resident in either UK or Austria, who are nearing the end of their studies or just beginning their professional careers. 139 candidates from around the world took part in the preliminary auditions for the Prize which were held in London and Vienna in March and April, and ten singers (two British, two Austrian, two South African, and one each from Australia, Korea, Romania and Sweden) were chosen to go through to the Final to perform in front of leading representatives of the musical world.
The Final attracted considerable attention with the overall standard generally deemed to be consistently high. One reviewer wrote : “ Another afternoon, another competition – that was the thought running through my mind when I turned up for this event. But I quickly revised my opinion as this proved to be a much more interesting event (than other competitions), with the contestants sparking off each other to produce a close fought and riveting finish”.
The First Prize of £ 5000, plus a public London recital, was awarded to the counter-tenor, Christopher Ainslie. His account of “Dawn, still darkness” from Jonathan Dove’s opera “Flight” was “as near to perfection as anything I have heard in the Wigmore Hall” according to one reviewer.
With the growth of interest in music of the Baroque, the counter-tenor voice has blossomed in recent times, and it is the first time that a voice of this category has been so honoured. Both Ainslie, and the winner of the second prize of £ 2500, the soprano Sarah-Jane Brandon, come from South Africa, and both trained at the Royal College of Music, as indeed did two other finalists.
An anonymous benefactor, for the second time running, provided funds for The Adèle Leigh Memorial Prize, in memory of the great London-born much-loved lyric soprano who captivated audiences in both Britain and Austria, beginning her career at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1947 and going on to win fame at the Volksoper in Vienna, the city which became her home.
Married to the Austrian diplomat, Dr Kurt Enderl, who later became Austrian Ambassador to London, she proved as adroit and successful as a diplomatic hostess as she had been as a singer. This Prize of £ 2000 was won by the Swedish soprano Ida Falk Winland. The Schubert Society Lied Prize of £ 500 plus a recital was won by the Vienna-trained Korean baritone Seho Chang.
The final Prize of the afternoon was The Ferdinand Rauter Memorial Prize for Accompanists, awarded in memory of the founder of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society, which went to James Baillieu. A few weeks later, on 26 June, the Richard Tauber Prize Recital was given at Wigmore Hall by Anna Leese, the young New Zealand soprano who won the 2005 Richard Tauber Prize. Accompanied by Graham Johnson, rightly acclaimed as one of the world’s leading vocal accompanists, she performed an ambitious programme of Purcell, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Walton and Britten.
Already engaged by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and with future engagements at Flanders Opera, Canadian Opera and in New Zealand, she has found that, like so many Tauber Prizewinners before her, such as Simon Keenlyside, William Dazeley, Catrin Wyn-Davies and Jonathan Lemalu, winning the prestigious Richard Tauber Prize has proved of huge importance to her musical career. So who was Richard Tauber ?
He was born on 16 May 1892 in Linz, Austria, the illegitimate son of an actor/theatre director who took over his education from the age of seven and gave his name to the boy. He studied at the Conservatoire in Frankfurt and made his debut at Chemnitz in 1913 singing first Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) and Max (Freischütz). He was quickly engaged for major roles at the Dresden Opera, where he stayed until 1926, before moving to the Vienna State Opera.
Over the next decade he performed on most of the world's great operatic stages. From 1923 he was also acclaimed in operetta, especially the roles associated with Franz Lehár, each of whose stage successes traditionally included a "Tauber song." Through these roles he became the best known and most popular singer in Germany and Austria. Unlike most of his operatic peers, Tauber also gained a reputation as both composer and conductor.
He completed an orchestral suite, two operettas and dozens of art songs. Tauber's father was half-Jewish, which forced the singer to flee Hitler's Germany and later, Austria. Britain welcomed him and Tauber made his permanent home in England, where he continued to sing in opera and operetta, appeared regularly on the radio and in concerts, made films, composed, conducted and recorded (735 official commercial records). He remained in London for the rest of his life.
Richard Tauber’s last stage appearance was as Ottavio in Don Giovanni with the Vienna State Opera company at Covent Garden on 27 September 1947 on a visit arranged by the Anglo-Austrian Music Society.
Anton Dermota stepped down to allow what everyone knew would be Tauber’s operatic swansong. He had been fighting cancer for some time and one lung had already been removed. Those who attended the performance or listened to the BBC broadcast confirm that Tauber remained a great and dedicated artist to the very last. Richard Tauber died on 8 January 1948 and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society presented a Memorial Concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 20 February that year, featuring music by and associated with Tauber.
The BBC Theatre Orchestra was conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, the Society’s Patron, and Walter Goehr. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, David Franklin, Constance Shacklock and the Luton Girls’ Choir all sang. The proceeds of the concert were modest, but the Luton Girls’ Choir had worked regularly with Tauber in his later years and were very moved by his untimely death, generously donating all the royalties of their last joint recording.
This enabled the Anglo-Austrian Music Society to establish the Richard Tauber Memorial Scholarship Fund.
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