Karl Richter’s youth was permeated with ecclesiastical influence: his father was a priest in the Evangelical church and as a boy Karl was a member of the choir of the Kreuzkirche in Dresden. Following the end of World War II, he studied with Rudolf Mauersberger, Karl Straube and Gunther Ramin in Leipzig, all of whom were closely associated with the performance and interpretation of the music of J. S. Bach; and having been appointed choirmaster of the Christuskirche, Leipzig, in 1946, he became organist at the Thomaskirche (a position previously held by Bach himself ) in 1949, the year in which he graduated. Subsequently, in 1951, Richter moved to Munich; here he taught at the Munich Academy of Music, where he was made a professor in 1956, and took up the...