Pierre Monteux, Maitre Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)A wonderful read, very rich in detail. Informative, delightful, humorous, sad, even inspiring.
Canarina is a very fine writer--no surprise to those of us who swore by his record reviews in the 1980's. Monteux's busy life could easily have degenerated into a series of dates and program listings, but the author's great skill prevents that from happening. He supplies meaningful context, perceptive interpretation of events, and fascinating digressions at all the right moments.
There is plenty of insider information, from the author himself, who knew Monteux and was a student at the Hancock school; from other professionals, conductors, players, librarians, critics and the like; and from members of the Monteux family. And no one is more knowledgeable than Canarina about Monteux's many recordings, their dates and their virtues.
Read it! You won't regret it.

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Pierre Monteux became famous at the age of 38 for conducting the riotous world premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in Paris on May 29, 1913. The composer, fearing bodily harm, escaped through a backstage window, while the imperturbable conductor persisted, forever to be identified with the event. He would also conduct the first concert performance and one of the first two recordings of Stravinsky's masterpiece, the other one conducted by Stravinsky himself. Though French by birth, the distinctively portly man with the walrus mustache resisted being typecast as a French conductor. He could have been a European maestro: he played for Brahms, worked with Grieg, presided over the world premieres of major works by Ravel, Stravinsky and many others, was Diaghilev's conductor of choice. But it was Monteux's American audiences, especially in San Francisco and Boston, who would love him the most over the course of a long career. He conducted many American premieres, works of Debussy, Falla, Ravel, and among the more than a dozen Boston premieres, those of The Rite of Spring and of Mahler's First Symphony. Canarina, a conductor and teacher of conducting himself, studied with Monteux for seven summers and brings great personal warmth and understanding to this wise, admiring and honest book, the first full-length biography of the man whom so many knew and loved as "Maitre."

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