John Rhodes was born, of German parents, near Brighton in 1952, moved to London aged 8 and lived there until 2006 when he moved to Zurich to take a job with a Swiss law firm. Having reviewed concerts and opera in Zurich and Lucerne for Seen and Heard, he returned to Crouch End in North London in 2023.
John’s love of classical music centres around Romantic German music, Mahler, Bruckner, Richard Strauss etc. but has expanded over the years to Shostakovich, Janáček, Sibelius and more. In Zurich he sang (tenor) with the Gemischter Chor, (works included Britten’s War Requiem , Mendelssohn’s Elijah and all the old war horses (Bach B Minor Mass, The Creation, the Messiah, Missa Solemnis). He now sings with the Crouch End Festival Chorus (works included Monteverdi Vespers, Brahms Deutsches Requiem and Elgar’s The Kingdom)
As a treble chorister in the Highgate School Choir in the 1960s, he sang and recorded the War Requiem conducted by Benjamin Britten. He also sang the work in performance innumerable times, in the UK and once abroad (Lisbon). Still with the boys’ choir, he sang in Mahler’s Third Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall and in Parsifal at Covent Garden. John played violin in the school orchestra.
At the age of 15 John lived for two years near Düsseldorf and regularly visited the opera house there, and that in nearby Cologne, and became acquainted with German opera, particularly Wagner and Richard Strauss.
At University in Exeter (studying law) he joined the choir and sang a number of standard choral works, including the Bach Passions.
John started work as a commercial lawyer in London in 1974 and became a very regular concert-goer and opera-goer. He had a BBC Proms season ticket (usually standing at the back of the Arena) for many years. He attended concerts at the Royal Festival Hall (those wonderfully cheap choir seats) at least twice a week, was a Friend of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia, and saw very many operas from the ‘Gods’ (Amphitheatre) at Covent Garden and English National Opera. He occasionally went to Glyndebourne and travelled abroad for the Salzburg, Lucerne and Bayreuth Festivals. He also went several times to Berlin in the days of Karajan. He still works as a solicitor, part-time, for a small City law firm. He is also Hon. Chairman of the UK Chapter of the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce.
John is married, enjoys playing pétanque in his local park and has two grown-up children.