GHCD 2327 Secure E-shop Broadcast & Review	CHARLES MUNCH NBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA DEBUSSY: Ibéria RAVEL Le tombeau de Couperin ROUSSEL Bacchus et Ariane Suite No.2 LIVE RECORDING: 1954 Debussy - Ibéria - III Le Matin d'un jour de fête Ravel - Le tombeau de Couperin - IV Rigudon Roussel - Suite No. 2 from Bachus et Ariane - IV Le baiser

Contents:

This issue commemorates the work of the great French conductor Charles Munch, who died in November 1968 at the age of 77.  He had been born on September 26, 1891 in the Alsatian capital, Strasbourg – Alsace-Lorraine then forming part of the German Empire, as proclaimed in January 1871 following the Franco-Prussian War.

Charles was the second of two sons whose father was Ernst Munch, a noted choral conductor and organist, who became well known in the 1880s for his performances of the sacred works of JS Bach, at a time when they were not as often encountered as they are today. Ernst’s eldest son, Fritz, succeeded his father as conductor of the St Wilhelm Choir in Strasbourg, and a cousin of Fritz and Charles – Hans Munch, born in 1893 – became a conductor and composer. The Munch family was also related to Albert Schweitzer. 

Having been born into such a musical home, it was only natural that the exceptional talents of Charles should be encouraged. His main instrument was the violin, and he studied initially at the Strasbourg Conservatoire, later with Carl Flesch in Berlin. At the outbreak of War in August 1914, Charles Munch joined the German Army and became an artillery sergeant, but was himself a victim of the German Army’s use of gas, and was also wounded at Verdun. After the War, the Treaty of Versailles ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France, and Munch became a French citizen. That same year, 1919, Munch was appointed concert-master of the Strasbourg Orchestra and, following Furtwangler’s assumption of the post of chief conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, accepted his invitation to become leader of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. It was during these years that Munch sought instruction from Furtwangler on conducting, which the older master was happy to advise.

Following the election of Adolf Hitler as German Chancellor in January 1933, Munch left Germany and moved to Paris, which city had recently seen his official debut as a conductor of the Walther Straram Orchestra. Munch’s skill and experience as an orchestral musician, and his participation of playing under some of the greatest conductors of the age, stood him in good stead, for within a few years, Munch had established an enviable reputation as a conductor of exceptional gifts. He conducted all the main orchestras in Paris, and when, with the pianist Alfred Cortot, the Paris Philharmonic Orchestra was established in 1935, Munch was its first chief conductor. In 1938, the year he first appeared in London, he was made chief conductor of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, his programmes becoming notable for an eclectic mix of familiar repertoire and new music.  

During World War II, Munch remained in Paris as conductor of the Conservatoire Orchestra, and following the Liberation, he was decorated with the Legion d’honneur. The following year, 1946, he made his American debut, with the Boston Symphony, where he created a deep impression, and in 1948 his American reputation was cemented with a nation-wide tour of the Uinted States with the French National Radio Orchestra. 

By this time, the 25-year reign of Serge Koussevitsky as permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was entering its final season, and in 1949 Munch was named as Koussevitsky’s successor – a post he held with distinction until 1962.  But Munch still had one more achievement to realise: he returned to France, where he founded the Orchestre de Paris, which soon became the country’s pre-eminent orchestra and attracting some of the world’s greatest conductors within a few years. Such was the rise of this orchestra that in 1968 it began an American tour with Munch conducting the majority of the concerts, but he suffered a heart attack in Richmond, Virginia in November of that year and died in what he always regarded as his second adopted country.

The recording career of Charles Munch covered barely thirty years, but it was an extensive and remarkably successful one that embraced a very wide range of repertoire, from the complete Brandenburg Concertos of JS Bach to Bohuslav Martinu’s final Sixth Symphony, the Fantaisies Symphoniques, which was written for, and dedicated to, Munch and the Boston Symphony for the 75^th anniversary season of the orchestra in 1955 – Martinu’s later Parables for orchestra was also premiered by Munch in Boston in January 1959, shortly before the composer’s death.

Munch made his first recording in Paris in 1938 for the German Polydor company. This was the world premiere recording of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand – then a new work, having been first performed in Vienna at the end of 1931 by Paul Wittgenstein, for whom it was written. The pianist was Jacqueline Blancard (who went on to make two further recordings of the work), but – such are the oddities of recording history – Munch’s second recording, the following year, was conducting the selfsame work for French HMV, with Alfred Cortot as soloist. During the War Munch made a number of further recordings with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, but these of course had limited circulation, and it was only after 1945 that his career on disc can truly be said to have flourished.

He undertook an extensive series of recordings for Decca in the immediate post-war period, several with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and the London Pilharmonic, but most were made in Paris with the Conservatoire orchestra. Almost all of this music was by French composers, four notable exceptions being Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Ossy Renardy, Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’, Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathetique’ and Beethoven’s Eighth symphonies. The last recording is interesting in that Munch went on to record seven Beethoven symphonies over the years – rather more than many will imagine – and for American Columbia (CBS) in the late 1940s Munch recorded Saint-Saens’s Third Symphony with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orcchestra of New York.

But it was during the Boston years that Munch created his greatest world-wide impact as a conductor on record. Once again, French music dominated his repertoire on disc, particularly memorable being an extensive series of recordings of the major works of Berlioz, and two outstanding complete recordings of Ravel’s ‘Daphnis et Chloe’ ballet. Of modern music, and in addition to his world premiere recordings of the sixth symphonies of Martinu and Walter Piston, Munch made memorable discs of music by Samuel Barber and conducted the world premiere recording of Walton’s Cello Concerto with Gregor Piatigorsky, who had commissioned the work from the English composer. Another English work of which Munch made a memorable recording was Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for strings, and successive notable soloists with whom he worked for RCA included Jascha Heifetz, Sviatoslav Richter and Benny Goodman. After he left Boston Munch returned to Decca, making several discs with the New Philharmonia Orchestra mostly of French music, a genre which effectively dominated his recorded repertoire.

Despite the depth of Munch’s devotion to French music during the 78rpm and long-playing eras, the three works in our compilation on this CD are very rare in his discography – with those by Ravel and Roussel making their first appearance under Munch. Taken ‘on the wing’ as it were, they exhibit his artistry at its best: at times, and especially in the Debussy, these performances demonstrate a stirring sense of rhythmic élan allied to a wondrously effective sense of internal orchestral balance – that of colouration, done so remarkably that few conductors have matched Munch’s demonstrably Impressionistic use of the orchestra: clarity where called for, yet otherwise an effusion of tone-painting in sound. These qualities suit the works by Roussel and Debussy particularly, but in Ravel’s jewel-like ‘Tombeau de Couperin’, Munch’s delightful sense of rhythmic detail is equally in evidence.                                                                            Robert Matthew-Walker © 2007

 NB:
The March 1954 concert at NBC was aired one week before Toscanini’s retirement concert 4.4.54. Munch was conducting as NBC guest at the Maestro’s invitation. This was the last concert in the
17-years NBC/Toscanini to be directed by a guest conductor. The NBC SO as such was disbanded shortly after 6.6.54 .

Page revised Thursday November 27 2007