Michael Kennedy
'People in the 1940s would sneer that the only interesting thing in a performance of Strauss's Alpine Symphony was when the wind machine fell over. That kind of talk annoyed me.' - Michael Kennedy in 2014, in conversation with Ivan Hewitt in The Daily Telegraph
English biographer, journalist and music writer Michael Kennedy was born at Chorlton-cum-Hardy on 19 February 1926. He worked his way up in journalism, joining The Daily Telegraph as a tea boy at fifteen, starting to write music criticism seven years later, and later becoming the paper's Northern Editor, joint chief music critic and chief music critic at The Sunday Telegraph. He was also on the Royal Northern College of Music's board of governors. He received an honorary music doctorate from Manchester University, and became an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society.
His writing interests included late Romanticism, post nineteenth century music-making in Manchester, the Hallé Orchestra, Adrian Boult, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Mahler, Walton, Britten and Richard Strauss. He edited the second edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Music.
Michael Kennedy died on 31 December 2014, aged eighty-eight.
A selection of articles about Michael Kennedy
CD Spotlight. Widely Divergent Composers - Music for violin and piano, reviewed by George Balcombe. '... clear and consistent ...'
Lasting friendships - Roderic Dunnett looks back to a glorious weekend celebrating Gerald Finzi and English Song in Ludlow with the Finzi Friends, and hopes for another next year