CBC won’t credit Dutoit when playing OSM recordings
CBC will not credit conductor while still playing music orchestra made under him
The music was Rossini’s Overture to La gazza ladra, or The Thieving Magpie, as host Ben Heppner translated the title last Sunday on Backstage, his show on CBC Radio. He noted, naturally enough, that “Charles Dutoit led the Montreal Symphony.”
This was by no means the last broadcast of an OSM recording on a CBC program, but if a new CBC policy is applied rigorously, it might have been the last time Dutoit is acknowledged on air as conductor.
“We are aware of the serious allegations against Charles Dutoit and the OSM third-party investigation that is currently pending,” writes Emma Bédard, from the corporation’s publicaffairs department, in response to an email. “And we have carefully considered our actions in light of this.
“As you know, the recordings of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra make up an important part of our Canadian classical repertoire on CBC Radio Two.
“While the allegations made towards Charles Dutoit are serious, we truly believe that removing these recordings entirely from our broadcasts would unjustly diminish the efforts of the many talented musicians who are featured in them. At this point, we are no longer crediting Mr. Dutoit as conductor.”
This decision will probably divide opinion. The CBC, like any news broadcaster worthy of the name, trades in information. The simple truth is that Dutoit was the conductor of record in more than 80 OSM releases on the Decca label from 1980 to 2002.
Why deny credit to a conductor whose staunchest opponents will recognize as an indispensable component of the success of those recordings?
The answer is that Dutoit has become even better known in the short term for multiple allegations of harassment and assault. To identify him as a conductor with no recognition of recent developments might imply ignorance of, or indifference to, the situation. By some, such unadorned identification might be construed as an endorsement.
Yet to announce methodically after every mention of “Charles Dutoit” that the CBC does not approve of harassment would hopelessly muddle the broadcast.
It is hard to imagine Julie Nesrallah on Tempo or Tom Allen on Shift (two upbeat weekday shows) adopting an earnest monotone to issue a disclaimer every time the radioactive name is spoken.
The network could avoid the problem by avoiding the recordings. This would be to ignore an epic achievement in the cultural history of Canada and a significant episode in the international evolution of recording.
The Dutoit/OSM catalogue in the 1980s helped establish digital technology as a sonically viable alternative to analog technology and the LP. It made the “Decca sound” a reality in the new format.
As Bédard points out, sending the Dutoit/OSM catalogue to the gulag would also unfairly discriminate against the musicians and choristers who participated in the recordings, to say nothing of the Decca technicians who successfully harnessed the resonance of the Church of St. Eustache.
Finally, a proscription would also make it more difficult for the CBC to meet its Canadian content quotas. Between the OSM and the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Mario Bernardi (1930-2013), the CBC has much of the standard repertoire covered.
Kent Nagano added a helpful Beethoven cycle to the OSM discography on Analekta — the Allegretto of the Seventh Symphony was heard and duly credited Monday morning on Nesrallah’s show. The Californian has also restored the OSM relationship with Decca.
All the same, those 80-plus Dutoit recordings of overtures, dances, rhapsodies and eminently excerptible suites are simply too convenient to do without.
It is too early to know how Decca, a subsidiary of the Universal Music Group, will manage the Dutoit/OSM discography. Last month in the Dussmann record store in Berlin (such things still exist in Europe), I noticed that the shelf presence of Dutoit and the OSM was minimal.
And this was the halcyon time before the headlines. Of course, German taste leans to German conductors and orchestras. These were abundant.
Dutoit is not listed in the Decca main artist catalogue at deccaclassics.com/en/artist. Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969), the Swiss conductor whose catalogue Dutoit was engaged to replace, is.
All the same, The Decca Sound: Dutoit-Montréal, a lavish 35-disc retrospective released in February 2016, remains available. Programming starts with Daphnis et Chloé (1980) and concludes with a disc of music by Mikis Theodorakis made in 2000 and released in 2004 including supplementary material recorded in that year by Dutoit with the London-based Philharmonia Orchestra.
This is perhaps an apt moment to remind readers that Dutoit has made international headlines before. In 2002, he resigned from the OSM after a denunciation by the president of the Quebec Musicians’ Guild in which accusations of sexual harassment played no known role.
But back to the box. The Decca page dedicated to this set functions nicely as a discographic resource. The recordings are fastidiously documented with timings, artists, month of recording, month of release, locations and technicians. You can even sample some excerpts.
Or you can sit back and think about it.
Soon the discussion will have to turn from a past music director of the OSM to potential future music directors. Nagano leaves his post at the end of 2019-20. The criteria of the search committee are unknown, but availability is essential.
Let it be noted that Juanjo Mena, 52, the Spanish conductor born in Basque Country who leads the OSM on Wednesday and Thursday in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique,” will step down this year as chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, leaving him with only a principal guest position with the Spanish National Orchestra and the directorship of the Cincinnati May Festival.
Unfortunately, Mena has expressed some misgivings about artistic life on this side of the Atlantic.
“My goal is to make good music and expand my repertoire,” he told the magazine El Cultural in 2016. “In the United States, it is easier to get lost in institutional relationships, business, marketing ... I get up every day at 6 in the morning to get to the rehearsals prepared, and that is what I want to continue doing.”
Two deaths in December should be noted. Violinist Mildred Goodman, a member of the OSM from 1950 to 1988, died in Montreal on Dec. 11 at 95. Goodman was concertmaster of the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra in the 1940s and ’50s and second violin in the Montreal String Quartet from 1955 to 1963. The latter post put her in the interesting position of premièring Glenn Gould’s String Quartet in 1956 and collaborating with that pianist in Brahms’s Piano Quintet Op. 34 in 1957. She was married to composer Clermont Pépin (1926-2006).
Pianist and vocal coach Janine Lachance died in Laval Dec. 16 at 85. A teacher at the Montreal and Quebec Conservatoires, she was the accompanist for classes given by Raoul Jobin, Léopold Simoneau and Pierrette Alarie. She made recordings with Colette Boky and Bruno Laplante, among others. Lachance had a fair voice and was noted for her ability to accompany herself — a rare skill in classical circles. She was inducted into the Canadian Opera Hall of Fame in 2007.