Obituaries Australia

Stuart Challender, who died yesterday in Sydney, was a brave man and a great musician. He was an outstanding conductor who presented music naturally, as the composer required. Nor did he seek to become a personality who would dominate an orchestra, let alone his public. That was unthinkable to him.

Yet he still had a toughness that some might have taken for brusqueness. Nearly right was never good enough, although he knew when not to goad his players too far.

Stuart Challender was a shy man. "It has taken me a long time to get to know myself,'' he said. And it took people a long time to get to know him.

Those who knew him better than I did attest to his strength of purpose and his refusal to indulge in, or require, sympathy. His spirit always survived, even when he was at his weakest, when his friends doubted if he would make it to the podium, let alone the step up on to that podium — and this before a single beat from those huge hands or a single note had sounded.

Stuart Challender was born in Hobart in 1947. As a child, he became interested in music because, as he said, he was good at it. "I liked being best at something. I wasn't very good at sport ... and I was under a bit of pressure to succeed at something. So I developed a passion for music.'' He was 13 when his father took him to a concert and he heard Beethoven's 'Pastoral' symphony. That was that. Challender wanted to conduct. He began his musical education by borrowing scores and records from the library.

He learnt the piano and the clarinet, while discovering the repertoire for himself, via the family gramophone, radio or a home-made crystal set in his bedroom, everything from 'The Rite of Spring' to broadcasts from Bayreuth.

At 17, Stuart Challender began studies at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. His conducting developed slowly (the conservatorium had no conducting course), with freelance experience sandwiched between his studies. In 1966, he worked for the then Victorian Opera, rehearsing the chorus, and doing various backstage jobs. Within two years he was its music director.

In 1977, he went to Europe, where he was to gain the backbone of his experience, mostly in Germany and Switzerland. "It was like starting again,'' he said. He followed the example of two of his idols, Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter, and began his professional career from the repetiteur's desk in the opera house.

He studied in Hamburg and Vienna. His first conducting engagement was in Lucerne, a performance of  'Kiss Me, Kate!' and, almost immediately after that, 'La Traviata'. Over the next decade, he conducted most of the regular (and some of the irregular) operatic repertoire in Basle, Nuremberg and Zurich.

In 1980, Challender returned home and received a telegram from the Australian Opera, offering him some engagements. He stayed to become its resident conductor. He also maintained a ceaseless interest in contemporary music as the artistic director of the Sydney-based Seymour Group. In 1985, he went freelance, but maintained a regular relationship with the Australian Opera, including conducting the world premiere of Richard Meale's 'Voss', based on Patrick White's novel.

In 1986, Stuart Challender was made the principal guest conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. A year later he succeeded Zdenek Macal as chief conductor, and he also became the orchestra's artistic director.

His appointment was unconventional. Here was a chief conductor of an orchestra whose main body of work had been in opera. "I'm having to learn the orchestral repertoire on the run. But you've got to begin somewhere,'' he said.

Within a few months, orchestra and conductor forged the best of musical friendships, producing concerts that were to set new standards and attract new audiences.

His repertoire expanded with care. He scaled the cathedrals of Bruckner and Mahler, but he also performed music closer to home, and, one suspected, to heart: Brian Howard, Peter Sculthorpe, Richard Meale, Carl Vine and Richard Mills.

At the same time, Stuart Challender's international career developed. In 1982 he conducted Joan Sutherland in 'Lucia di Lammermoor' at the Netherlands Opera; in 1987 he conducted orchestras in Britain; in Hong Kong in 1989 he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra; in 1990, he conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — an invitation that came after the orchestra's general manager heard Challender conduct Prokofiev's 'The Fiery Angel' at the 1988 Adelaide Festival and asked: "Where have you been hiding him?'' Earlier this year, he conducted Dvorak's 'Rusalka' for the English National Opera, but returned home halfway through the series of performances, tired and ill.

In March, Stuart Challender revealed publicly that he had AIDS, expressing the hope he would conduct "until I drop''. This straightforward, dignified announcement attracted much admiration and sympathy. "I don't see myself as a martyr to the cause or a crusader,'' he said. "If I had multiple sclerosis, one wouldn't be shy about announcing it to the world.''

In June, Stuart Challender made his last public concert appearance, in Hobart, conducting the Tasmanian Symphony. Although it was suspected he was unlikely to conduct again, he had different ideas. He was determined to do the Australian Opera's new production of Richard Strauss's 'Der Rosenkavalier', a production that had been staged virtually for Challender to conduct.

At the first night, in the Sydney Opera House on 2 September, Challender directed a ravishing, glowing performance that belied the fact he had never conducted the opera before. The music possessed such optimism, strength and dignity that one wished Strauss had written more — this, despite the fact the opera finished at midnight.

After the singers' curtain calls, Challender came on stage to be greeted by a standing ovation that had the force of a tempest. He bowed, thanked the orchestra, shook hands with the prompter, gently embraced the principals ... down came the curtain and he was gone.

In 'Der Rosenkavalier', the Marschallin tells her young lover, Octavian, of her fears of growing old and how, in the deep of night, she rises from her bed and goes round stopping all the clocks.

Time was cruel to Stuart Challender, whose longevity (particularly for one in his profession) was cut short. His national reputation was assured; his international reputation was burgeoning. Music and musicians have every reason to mourn.

It is a tribute to his determination that he carried on conducting for as long as he did: no one could do the mental work, the learning of scores, or the physical work except him. He told me in April that his greatest fear was that his mind would give up before his body. No such fears. Although his body became increasingly fragile, that mind remained as sharp as ever.

"Always keep it going,'' he said of how to conduct Brahms. That was Stuart Challender. He always kept going.