From a broadcast recorded September 21, 1958 from Salle du Pavillon, Montreux by RTS – a performance of Franck’s D Minor Symphony with Orchestre National de la RadioDiffusion Française, conducted by Pierre Monteux.
As a student at the Paris Conservatory, Pierre Monteux studied violin and viola. At the age of 12, he organized and conducted a small orchestra made up of the Conservatory’s students. He attended the premiere of César Franck’s D minor Symphony, premiered Saint-Saëns’s Septet with the composer at the piano, and similarly collaborated with Faure in a performance of his Second Piano Quartet. As a violist, he performed a Brahms Quartet in the presence of the composer, who remarked, “It takes the French to play my music properly. The Germans all play it much too heavily.” As an orchestral musician, he premiered Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
Monteux served as principal conductor of French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera (1917-19), music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1919–24), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (1924-34), the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (1929–38), and the San Francisco Symphony (1936-52). At the age of 86, he became chief conductor of the London Symphony, signing a contract for twenty-five years, with an option of renewal! A noted teacher, in 1943 he founded the Pierre Monteux School, a six-week summer program in Hancock, Maine. Among his students were Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, and David Zinman.
Monteux was noted for his clear, economical conducting style as well as his rapport with the musicians of the orchestra. Toscanini considered his baton technique to be the best he had ever seen.
Here’s a little history to sink your teeth into.
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