Born in the Swiss town of Vevey on 11 November 1883, Ernest Ansermet grew up with a mathematician father who also taught school and a mother who gave him his earliest musical instruction. After completing a mathematics degree at Lausanne University in 1903 he took up secondary-school teaching and then served briefly as a professor of mathematics in Lausanne between 1905 and 1906. At the same time he pursued composition studies with Ernest Bloch. Once he resolved to make music his profession he began to observe leading conductors at work; later he received formal lessons from Mottl in Munich and Nikisch in Berlin. His first appearances on the podium took place in Lausanne and Montreux in 1910. Ansermet always maintained that his conducting method rested chiefly on what he had learned by watching Francisco de Lacerda. When de Lacerda stepped down in 1911, Ansermet assumed leadership of the Kursaal concerts in Montreux; four years afterward he was appointed conductor of the Geneva Symphony Orchestra. During the years preceding and encompassing the First World War, Igor Stravinsky made prolonged visits to Switzerland, and Ansermet formed close friendships with him as well as with Debussy and Ravel. Serge Diaghilev engaged him as principal conductor for the Ballets Russes; when the impresario transferred the troupe to America during the war, Ansermet made his North American debut with the company in New York in 1916 and reached South America the following year. While on that American tour he also produced his earliest recordings. On 28 September 1918 he led the first performance of Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” in Lausanne. Throughout the 1920s he directed several further Ballets Russes premieres, among them Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, Prokofiev’s , and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, establishing himself as Stravinsky’s preferred conductor. In Geneva in 1918 he established L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and continued as its music director until his retirement in 1966. Although guest engagements took him elsewhere from time to time, the greater part of his career remained devoted to the orchestra he had founded. His interpretive strengths lay chiefly in Classical repertory and in tonal music of the twentieth century, especially works by French and Swiss composers; he was likewise regarded as an authoritative exponent of Russian scores descended from the Rimsky-Korsakov tradition, though the broader Romantic literature lay outside his strongest territory. Among the composers whose music he most consistently championed were Debussy, Ravel, Falla, Roussel, Honegger, Frank Martin, Bartók, and Britten. Clarity of texture and precision of execution distinguished his performances. Those qualities found particular documentation in the early-stereo LP recordings he made for English Decca (issued in North America under the London imprint and bearing the “ffss” designation), prized for their luminous, spacious, and sharply defined sonics. He died in Geneva on 20 February 1969.
