100 Musicians #45
Pierre Monteux 1875 – 1964
PToscanini said he had the best baton technique he had ever seen
IERRE MONTEUX is well remembered for accepting the position of principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1961, when he was 86 on condition that he was given a 25-year contract. He had only three years in post, dying in 1964, but he transformed the orchestra. According to Neville Marriner he “made them feel like an international orchestra ... He gave them extended horizons and some of his achievements with the orchestra, both at home and abroad, gave them quite a different constitution”. Although he was especially renowned in French music, he had a huge repertoire, and gave the 50th anniversary performance of The Rite of Spring in Stravinsky’s presence, having conducted the premiere of his ballet, Petrushka, in 1911. He went on to be the regular conductor of Les Ballets Russes.
Monteux was born in 1875 in Paris to a family of Sephardic Jews. He took up the violin at six and within three years was studying at the Conservatoire de Paris alongside George Enescu, Carl Flesch, Fritz Kreisler and Jacques Thibaud. Not a bad student cohort! At 12, he put together a chamber orchestra to accompany fellow student Alfred Cortot in piano concertos, which Monteux conducted. He also learnt the viola, and became a well-regarded chamber music performer, playing for composers such as Brahms, Fauré and Grieg, and was principal viola in the 1902 premiere of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. In his seventies he stood in with the Budapest Quartet for one performance of Beethoven quartets, which he played without a score.
In 1895 he stood in for Saint-Saëns conducting the premiere of his oratorio La lyre et la harpe, when the composer decided to play the organ part. It was a huge success and launched him as a conductor alongside his viola playing.
By 1917 he had been engaged to conduct French operas at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York, and his international career was in full flight. In 1919 he was made principal conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a post followed later as “first conductor” of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra alongside chief conductor Willem Mengelberg and in 1935 became chief conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. In 1942 he moved to the US and took American citizenship, but continued to conduct across the world.
Record producer John Culshaw said Monteux was “that rarest of beings – a conductor who was loved by his orchestras ... to call him a legend would be to understate the case.” Toscanini said he had the best baton technique he had ever seen.