Pierre Monteux

During America's golden age of orchestral performance, conductor Pierre Monteux maintained an unusually extended professional life that originated in the 1800s, featured his leadership of the first performance of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps, and reached into the 1960s. Several American ensembles acquired a fundamentally French character under his direction. His extensive recorded output extended deep into the 78 rpm period, with many titles receiving later reissues; a 1955 Boston Symphony Orchestra collection of works by Berlioz, Brahms, Chausson, Debussy, Franck, and d'Indy was digitally reissued on the ICA label in 2018.

Monteux entered the world in Paris on April 4, 1875, into a nonreligious Jewish family. Although his father worked as a shoe salesman and showed scant interest in music, his mother, a conservatory graduate, detected her son's ability early on. Violin instruction began at age six. At nine he gained admission to the Conservatoire de Paris, where George Enescu and Fritz Kreisler were fellow students. He also formed a friendship with pianist Alfred Cortot, and at twelve he assembled an orchestra of classmates to accompany Cortot's recitals around Paris. As a violist he belonged to the Quatuor Geloso and performed with several Parisian groups, among them the orchestra at the Folies Bergère music hall. His podium debut occurred in 1895 when he substituted for Camille Saint-Saëns in an oratorio performance of La lyre et la harpe; after Saint-Saëns rejected the scheduled organist and insisted on playing the part himself, a visibly anxious Monteux was called upon to take the podium. Monteux's first recording session took place in 1903 as violist in an ensemble supporting tenor Albert Vaguet in an excerpt from Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots.

Although he sustained a thriving career as a string player, conducting engagements multiplied during the opening decades of the twentieth century. Frequent work with ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev led directly to Monteux's participation in one of the century's landmark classical events: the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps. Despite personally disliking the score, which provoked a notorious audience disturbance at its first hearing, Monteux witnessed its later elevation to masterpiece status. He served in the French army during World War I. Once hostilities ended he began an extended American chapter that would occupy much of his remaining career. Several French operas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York came under his baton, and in 1919 he assumed the chief conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Rebuilding proved challenging after the forced departure of Karl Muck amid anti-German feeling and the exodus of many musicians; Monteux held the post until 1924, gradually restoring the ensemble through auditions that drew players from varied backgrounds. The orchestra still bears traces of the essentially French approach he instilled, and he continued to appear regularly as guest conductor while adding further recordings.

After returning to Europe for a period, Monteux led Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1924 to 1934 and also took charge of the newly formed Orchestre Symphonique de Paris in 1929, remaining until 1938. In 1936 he accepted the music directorship of the San Francisco Symphony, staying until 1952 and devoting his full attention to the post while political tensions mounted across Europe. The Monteux School, the conductor-training academy he had founded in France, relocated to Hancock, Maine, where he spent part of each year. Active well into his ninth decade, Monteux appeared as guest conductor with many European orchestras and accepted the chief conductorship of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1961. His final concert occurred in April 1964 with the RAI Radio and Television Symphony in Milan. Following a series of strokes, he died at his Maine residence on July 1, 1964. Numerous 78 rpm recordings, particularly those made with the Boston Symphony for RCA Victor, later appeared on LP, then CD, and eventually on streaming platforms; as of 2024 more than 175 digital-era albums featuring Monteux remain available, supplementing an extensive legacy of LPs and 78s.