The Rudolf Kempe Society, founded in London in 1980, and its German Branch, launched in Munich in 1982, were both registered charities which, through a variety of activities in England and Germany, worked independently as well as through an exchange scheme towards the same goal in professional education: to bridge the gap between the means of training generally offered by established institutions and the ever-increasing demands made on young musicians entering the profession.
Following Rudolf Kempe’s concern for young artists and their education, the Society was founded by English musicians in memory of the great German conductor. Under the Artistic Directorship of his widow, Cordula, and with the encouragement of many eminent fellow artists, it supported young musicians for four decades through master classes and workshops, and by affording them opportunities for concerts and radio recordings both in the UK and in Germany.
These activities also involved the general public, giving them insight into the process of artistic creation and interpretation, and so enhancing their enjoyment and understanding of music and of those who devote their lives to performing it.
What the Society did
- Master classes and workshops for young singers, instrumentalists and conductors, often in public, so that audiences could share in the work of interpretation – see Master Classes.
- The International Young Artists Platform, which gave gifted students and young professionals – many from the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition – concerts and radio recordings in the UK and Germany.
- Songs of Apollo, Cordula Kempe’s programmes of word and music, in which leading actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the stage shared the platform with distinguished musicians – see Songs of Apollo.
- The Kempe Archive of Rudolf Kempe’s marked scores and recordings, kept for study and for public screenings and discussions – see The Kempe Archive.
- Concerts at the Kempe Studio at The Muses, from birthday concerts each June in Rudolf Kempe’s memory to Lenten programmes, summer garden concerts and the Festival of Young Voices – all listed in the events archive.
Patrons
The great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who had sung under Rudolf Kempe, was Patron of the Society from 1978 to 2012. “As we commemorate Rudolf Kempe,” he wrote, “we pay tribute to an artist who as a musician and human being radiated the finest of qualities gracing the greatest of talents – truthfulness.”
He was succeeded by the actor Dame Judi Dench, a great admirer of Cordula Kempe’s work, who also took part in the Society’s word and music programmes herself.
The Kempe Studio at The Muses
The Muses was the Society’s UK home. Its studio kept the audience close to the performers, which gave the concerts their uniquely intimate, congenial atmosphere, and its terraced garden lay just at the rear of the house.
From its UK base at The Muses, 58 Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon – between the Royal Shakespeare Company’s theatres, overlooking the park and the River Avon – the Society ran a series of intimate recitals, poetry readings, workshops and, British summers permitting, garden concerts. Rudolf Kempe’s remains rest in the garden there, remembered in Hazell Hills’s poem Roundelay. Take a tour of the house, the studio and the garden in photographs.
Many concerts and programmes were also given at the theatres of the Royal Shakespeare Company, in London – including Wigmore Hall – and in Germany, especially in Munich and in Dresden, Rudolf Kempe’s home city.
The closure of the Society
After forty years the Society closed in 2021, unable to continue after the Covid-19 pandemic, and it has been removed from the Charity Commission register. Rudolf Kempe’s archive is now housed with the Staatskapelle in Dresden. Cordula Kempe, the Society’s Artistic Director, died in November 2024. Read the Society’s closing letter to its friends.
This website is kept as a record of the Society’s work: its history, the Songs of Apollo programmes and the archive of its concerts and events.