Charles Munch (conductor)

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Charles Munch (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁl mynʃ]; born Charles Münch; 26 September 1891 – 6 November 1968)[1] was an Alsatian French symphonic conductor and violinist. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he was best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Life and career

Munch was born in 1891 in

Strasbourg Conservatoire
. His father, Ernst, was a professor of organ at the Conservatoire and performed at the cathedral; he also directed an orchestra with his son Charles in the second violins.

After receiving his diploma in 1912, Charles studied with Carl Flesch in Berlin and Lucien Capet at the Conservatoire de Paris. He was conscripted into the German army in World War I, serving as a sergeant gunner. He was gassed at Péronne and wounded at Verdun. Though most of his career was accomplished in France and in the United States, Munch considered that "as an Alsacian and as a musician, [he was] purely and profoundly German, but that [he was] a friend of many countries and first and foremost a musician and a conductor".[2]

In 1920, Munch became professor of violin at the

Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne. He then served as concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler and Bruno Walter from 1926 to 1933.[1]

At the age of 41, Munch made his conducting debut in Paris on 1 November 1932. Munch's fiancée, Geneviève Maury, granddaughter of a founder of the

Krolloper
.

Following this success, Munch conducted the

École Normale de Musique (from 1937 to 1939). One of his pupils there was also Czech composer-conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová.[3][4]

Plaque at Place Émile Dreux, village de Voisins in Louveciennes, Yvelines, France

Munch remained in France conducting the Conservatoire Orchestra during the

Légion d'honneur
with the red ribbon in 1945 and the degree of Commandeur in 1952.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Charles Munch in the Hungarian Radio, 1966, Budapest

Munch made his début with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 27 December 1946. He was its Music Director from 1949 to 1962. Munch was also Director of the Berkshire Music Festival and Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood) from 1951 through 1962. He led relaxed rehearsals which orchestra members appreciated after the authoritarian Serge Koussevitzky. Among his pupils at Tanglewood was Serge Fournier and the first prize winner of the International Competition of Orchestra Conductors, Seiji Ozawa.[5] Munch also received honorary degrees from Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, and the New England Conservatory of Music.

He excelled in the modern French repertoire, especially Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and was considered to be an authoritative performer of Hector Berlioz. However, Munch's programs also regularly featured works by composers such as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner. His thirteen-year tenure in Boston included 39 world premieres and 58 American first performances, and offered audiences 168 contemporary works. Fourteen of these premieres were works commissioned by the Boston Symphony and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation to celebrate the Orchestra's 75th Anniversary in 1956. (A 15th commission was never completed.)

Munch invited former Boston Symphony music director Pierre Monteux to guest conduct, record, and tour with the orchestra after an absence of more than 25 years. Under Munch, guest conductors became an integral part of the Boston Symphony's programming, both in Boston and at Tanglewood.

Munch led the Boston Symphony on its first transcontinental tour of the United States in 1953. He became the first conductor to take them on tour overseas: Europe in 1952 and 1956, and East Asia and Australia in 1960. During the 1956 tour, the Boston Symphony was the first American orchestra to perform in the Soviet Union.

The Boston Symphony under Munch made a series of recordings for

stereophonic
versions.

Selections from Boston Symphony rehearsals under Leonard Bernstein, Koussevitzky, and Munch were broadcast nationally on the NBC Radio Network from 1948–1951. NBC carried portions of the Orchestra's performances from 1954–1957. Beginning in 1951, the BSO was broadcast over local radio stations in the Boston area. Starting in 1957, Boston Symphony performances under Munch and guest conductors were disseminated regionally, nationally, and internationally through the Boston Symphony Transcription Trust. Under Munch, the Boston Symphony appeared on television. The first BSO television broadcast was under Bernstein in 1949 at Carnegie Hall.

Orchestre de Paris

Munch returned to France and in 1963 became president of the

Ravel
's Piano Concerto in G, with this orchestra, and released them posthumously.

Books

In 1955, Oxford University Press published I Am a Conductor by Munch in a translation by Leonard Burkat. It was originally issued in 1954 in French as Je suis chef d'orchestre. The work is a collection of Munch's thoughts on conducting and the role of a conductor.

D. Kern Holoman wrote Munch's first biography in English, Charles Munch. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2011.

Recordings

Munch's discography is extensive, both in Boston on

RCA Victor and at his various European posts and guest conducting assignments on various labels, including English Decca, EMI, Nonesuch, Erato and Auvidis-Valois
.

He began making records in Paris before the war, for EMI. Munch then made a renowned series of Decca Full Frequency Range Recordings (FFRR) in the late 1940s. After several recordings with the New York Philharmonic for Columbia, Munch began making recordings for RCA Victor soon after his arrival in Boston as Music Director. These included memorable Berlioz, Honegger, Roussel, and Saint-Saëns tapings.

His first stereophonic recording with the Boston Symphony, in Boston's Symphony Hall in February 1954, was devoted to a complete version of

Le chasseur maudit
.

Upon Munch's return to Paris, he made Erato disks with the Orchestre Lamoureux, and with the Orchestre de Paris he again recorded for EMI. He also made recordings for a number of other companies including Decca/London.

A number of Munch's recordings have been available continuously since their original releases, among them Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe. RCA reissued Munch Conducts Berlioz in a multi-disc set, including all of their Munch recordings. BMG/Japan has issued two different editions of Munch's RCA Victor recordings on CD, 1998 and 2006. The latter was made up of 41 CDs and encompassed all but a handful of Munch recordings with the Boston Symphony. in 2016, Sony released all of Munch's Columbia and RCA Victor recordings including performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestra. Many of these had never been officially released on compact disc. In 2018, Warner Classics issued a comprehensive CD box set of Munch's recordings, drawn from their archives of the labels of the former EMI group. Eloquence Australia released a CD box set of Munch's complete DECCA recordings in 2020.

Television

The Boston Symphony appeared on television with Munch locally on WGBH-TV, Boston, and nationally through a syndicated series. NHK broadcast throughout Japan the opening concert of the Boston Symphony's tour of Japan in 1960. Munch also appeared on film or television with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the Hungarian Radio and Television Orchestra, the Orchestre National de l'ORTF, and the Orchestre de Radio-Canada. Several of these performances have been issued on DVD.

Sources

  • Baker-Carr, Janet (1977). Evening at Symphony. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. .
  • Canarina, John (2003). Pierre Monteux Maitre. Pompton Plains: Amadeus Press. .
  • Collard, Georges; Clough, E.F.; Cuming, G.J. (1962–63). "Charles Munch". Audio & Record Review. ii (9): 16–18 and 83–86.
  • Holoman, D. Kern (2011). Charles Munch. New York: Oxford University Press. .
  • Honegger, Genevieve (1992). Charles Munch: Un Chef d'orchestre dans le siecle. Strasbourg.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Kupferberg, Herbert (1976). Tanglewood. New York: McGraw-Hill. .
  • Leinsdorf, Erich (1976). Cadenza. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. .
  • Monteux, Doris (1965). It's All in the Music. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy.
  • Monteux, Fifi and Monteux, Doris (1962). Everyone is Someone. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Munch, Charles, translation from the French by Leonard Burkat (1955). I Am A Conductor. New York: Oxford University Press.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Olivier, Pierre (1987). Charles Munch: a Biography in Recordings. Paris.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Sadie, Stanley, Ed. (1980). New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Oxford University Press.
    ISBN 0-333-23111-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  • Snyder, Louis (1979). Community of Sound. Boston: Beacon Press. .
  • Unattributed (1949). "There Will Be Joy". Time. Vol. LIV, 25, no. December 19. pp. 40–46.
  • Various (2001). Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall Centennial, From the Broadcast Archives 1943-2000, (Booklet). Boston: Boston Symphony Orchestra.
  • Wooldridge, David (1970). Conductor's World. New York: Praeger.

References

  1. ^ .
  2. ^ Charles Munch, quoted by Bernard Gavoty in his preface for Je suis chef d'orchestre, Paris: 1954.
  3. ^ Holoman, 2011, p.47
  4. ^ Munch, 1955, p.32
  5. ^ "A Tribute to Seiji Ozawa". BSO. Retrieved 2024-02-11.

External links