Pierre Monteux with his second wife Germaine and their daughter Denise (cropped image from a 1919 photograph in the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
During the period of Pierre Monteux’ career as a conductor (which basically ran from 1895 to 1964), music composed during the nineteenth century tended to dominate the symphonic repertoire. It is therefore worth observing that, in the 24-CD box set of the complete recordings of Pierre Monteux in Europe released on the Decca label, the selections from the nineteenth century are decidedly modest and even constitute slightly less attention than the music of the First Viennese School composers. This is a slightly unbalanced claim, of course: Joseph Haydn was still composing during the first decade of the nineteenth century, Ludwig van Beethoven was active through 1826, and the first entry in Otto Erich Deutsch’s thematic catalog of the music of Franz Schubert dates from 1810.
Even so, my guess is that most readers would have no trouble rattling off an extensive list of names of post-Schubert nineteenth-century composers taking in not only Vienna but also Germany, France, Italy, Russia, and even Norway. That being the case, it is interesting to see where Monteux’ preferences reside in this recorded document of his final years as a conductor. While Robert Schumann is neglected, Johannes Brahms receives the most attention in this portion of the collection. Indeed, there are two different recordings of his Opus 63 (second) symphony in D major, one by the Vienna Philharmonic in 1959 and one by the London Symphony Orchestra in 1962. “By the numbers,” Brahms is followed by Hector Berlioz, represented by a complete account of Roméo et Juliette followed by the Opus 14 “Symphonie fantastique.” (It is worth noting that the “Three Bs” phrase was coined by Peter Cornelius in 1854, who followed the names of Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven with Berlioz. Hans von Bülow deserves credit for replacing Berlioz with Brahms.)
There are also two CDs devoted to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, consisting only of excerpts from two of his ballet scores, The Sleeping Beauty (Opus 66) and Swan Lake (Opus 20). In the ordering of the box set, these precede the recording of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opus 35 “symphonic suite,” “Scheherazade.” Ironically, Michel Fokine brought Opus 35 into the ballet repertoire when he created a new work for the Ballets Russes, which was first performed on June 4, 1910. (One might almost say that Fokine “escorted” Rimsky-Korsakov’s music into the twentieth century. His next major creation for the Ballets Russes was “The Firebird;” and much of composer Igor Stravinsky’s technique in the score for this ballet can be traced back to his studies with Rimsky-Korsakov.)
That leaves only two compositions in the “odds-and-ends category.” On the theatrical side there are four excerpts of the music by Felix Mendelssohn inspired by William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On the symphony side the CD containing Brahms’ Opus 15 (first) piano concerto in D minor (with pianist Julius Katchen) is coupled with Antonín Dvořák's Opus 70 (seventh) symphony, whose inspiration can be traced by to the composer’s first encounter with Brahms’ Opus 90 (third) symphony in F major.
Within this framework I suspect that my own personal interests lie most heavily in the time that Monteux spent with the Ballets Russes. He was only an assistant conductor, and his primary duty was to lead the viola section. This clearly gave him an “insider’s view” of any of Tchaikovsky’s music that found its way into Ballets Russes productions. However, as a conductor he is better known for his efforts in conducting Stravinsky’s music for both “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring.” (Indeed, Monteux worked closely with Stravinsky to ready the score for the latter for performance.) Where “pure music” is concerned, I would say that, as a listener, my attention was most readily engaged by Monteux’ approaches to Brahms, and I was more than a little surprised at how few Brahms compositions show up in the recordings he made in the United States with both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. Apparently, when it came to bringing Brahms to the attention of American audiences, Arturo Toscanini’s commitment to Brahms was far stronger!
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