Vale Nikolaus Harnoncourt
One of the great pioneers of historically informed performance, Nikolaus Harnoncourt has died in Vienna aged 86.
Just last year, on December 5, one day before his 86th birthday, the audience of the Concentus Musicus Wien, the ensemble that he founded in 1953, found a personal letter of farewell from him in its evening programme.
Born into European nobility in Berlin in 1929, Harnoncourt was first a cellist before going on to build a brilliant career at the pinnacle of early Western classical music.
Read the tributes in The Guardian and the New York Times.
