André Cluytens

Emerging from leadership of a theater ensemble, Belgian-born André Cluytens, whose name is pronounced clue-ton, advanced to rank among Europe’s foremost orchestral figures throughout the 1950s and 1960s, leaving lasting marks in both symphonic concerts and operatic productions. Born in Antwerp in 1905, he studied piano at the Royal Flemish Conservatory and, while still a teenager, assisted his father, then conductor at Antwerp’s Royal Theater. After rising to first conductor there, he relocated to France, working in opera houses in Lyon, Bordeaux, and Vichy before settling permanently in Paris and acquiring French citizenship. He later became principal conductor and subsequently music director at the Paris Opera-Comique. In 1949 he succeeded Charles Munch as chief conductor of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, simultaneously serving as principal conductor of the Belgian National Orchestra and later assuming the chief conductorship of the French National Radio Orchestra. He directed performances at the Vienna State Opera, afterward led the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and became the first French conductor to appear at Bayreuth.

Although French repertoire formed the core of his reputation, Cluytens also delivered distinguished interpretations of music from the German-Austrian tradition. His recording activity began in the 78-rpm era; near its close he produced the first complete recording of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann for Columbia Records, together with Bizet’s Carmen. That early Hoffmann set, still available on CD via Naxos Records as of 2006, continues to be counted among the finest accounts ever made. The bulk of his discography was created for EMI, encompassing an unusually wide range of repertoire; notable mono-era releases include finely judged readings of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Massenet’s Manon. In stereo, his most celebrated achievement was a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic, the orchestra’s first such cycle on record and the only one it ever made with a guest conductor, remaining in the catalog for decades.

Cluytens maintained a full schedule of concerts and sessions into the mid-1960s, when stomach cancer was diagnosed. He persisted in his work despite declining health, one of his final recordings being Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ. He died in June 1967. His recorded legacy includes not only an impressive sequence of French operatic and orchestral masterpieces but also performances of Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Smetana, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Schumann. The continuing value of these interpretations is reflected in the steady reappearance of many titles on CD through specialist labels such as Testament, alongside EMI’s own reissues, whether originally mono or stereo.