Charles Munch (conductor)
His father, Ernst, was a professor of organ at the conservatory and performed at the cathedral; he also directed an orchestra with his son Charles in the second violins.
After receiving his diploma in 1912, Charles studied with Carl Flesch in Berlin and Lucien Capet at the Conservatoire de Paris.
Munch's fiancée, Geneviève Maury, granddaughter of a founder of the Nestlé Chocolate Company, rented the hall and hired the Walther Straram Concerts Orchestra.
During these years, Munch gave first performances of works by Honegger, Jean Roger-Ducasse, Joseph Guy Ropartz, Roussel, and Florent Schmitt.
[3][4] Munch remained in France conducting the Conservatoire Orchestra during the German occupation, believing it best to maintain the morale of the French people.
Among his pupils at Tanglewood was Serge Fournier and the first prize winner of the International Competition of Orchestra Conductors, Seiji Ozawa.
He excelled in the modern French repertoire, especially Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and was considered to be an authoritative performer of Hector Berlioz.
However, Munch's programs also regularly featured works by composers such as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner.
His thirteen-year tenure in Boston included 39 world premieres and 58 American first performances, and offered audiences 168 contemporary works.
Fourteen of these premieres were works commissioned by the Boston Symphony and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation to celebrate the Orchestra's 75th Anniversary in 1956.
Munch invited former Boston Symphony music director Pierre Monteux to guest conduct, record, and tour with the orchestra after an absence of more than 25 years.
Selections from Boston Symphony rehearsals under Leonard Bernstein, Koussevitzky, and Munch were broadcast nationally on the NBC Radio Network from 1948–1951.
In 1967, at the request of France's Minister of Culture, André Malraux, he founded the first full-time salaried French orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and conducted its first concert on 14 November 1967.
The following year, he died of a heart attack suffered at his hotel in Richmond, Virginia while on an American tour with his new orchestra.
Munch's discography is extensive, both in Boston on RCA Victor and at his various European posts and guest conducting assignments on various labels, including English Decca, EMI, Nonesuch, Erato and Auvidis-Valois.
A number of Munch's recordings have been available continuously since their original releases, among them Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe.
In 2018, Warner Classics issued a comprehensive CD box set of Munch's recordings, drawn from their archives of the labels of the former EMI group.
