Music Weblog

John Eliot Gardiner [b.1943], a native of Dorset, England, is considered one of the leading conductors of Baroque music.  As founder of the Monteverdi Choir in 1964, Gardiner helped revive interest in 17th and 18th century music, which expanded further when his ensembles began the practice of employing period instruments (whether restored antiques or modern-day reproductions) in his various performances and recordings.

Gardiner was very nearly a child prodigy of the podium, beginning his career as a conductor at the age of 15.  While studying history and Arabic in his late teens at King’s College, Cambridge, he toured the Middle East as conductor of the Oxford and Cambridge Singers.  His work with the aforementioned Monteverdi Choir eventually led him to form the English Baroque Soloists, which made its professional debut in a performance of the Handel pastoral opera, Acis and Galatea, in 1977 at the Innsbruck [Austria] Festival of Early Music.

The first time Gardiner conducted an opera in his native England took place in 1969, when he appeared with the English National Opera for a performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.  His debut at Covent Garden came four years later when he conducted a production of Iphigénie en Tauride by Gluck, which was composed in 1779.  In the early 1980s, Gardiner was lead conductor for CBC Vancouver [Canada] Orchestra, after which [1983–88] he became music director of Opéra National de Lyon in France.

More recently, Gardiner took a music ensemble on tour throughout the United States and Europe in 2000—the project became known as the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage—where they performed all of Bach’s sacred cantatas over a 52-week period in various churches.  He has continued to appear as a guest conductor with some of the world’s most prominent musical ensembles, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Gardiner has made more than 250 recordings on a number of classical labels, primarily DG and Philips.  He has also earned quite a few honors along the way.  He received the Gramophone “Artist of the Year” award in 1994, was named Klassik Echo’s “Conductor of the Year” in 1995, and that same year became the first conductor to win the Dietrich Buxtehude Prize.  Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1998.

John Eliot Gardiner leads the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir in a selection from the Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach:

Charles Dutoit [b. 1936], a native of Lausanne, Switzerland, has enjoyed a long and highly acclaimed career as a conductor after starting as a professional viola player in 1957 with several European and South American orchestras.  Best known for his 25 years as artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra [1977–2002], his interest in foreign travel has led him to perform in nearly every country in the world; at last count, his globe-trotting exploits have him reportedly visiting 190-plus nations.

His touring schedule notwithstanding, Dutoit spent the years from 1959 to 1977 quite close to home.  He made his conducting debut with the Radio Lausanne orchestra, led the Radio Zurich Orchestra until 1967, and then spent eleven years as leader of the Bern Symphony Orchestra.  All the while, however, he enjoyed fairly lengthy guest conducting stints in locations as diverse as Mexico City, Gothenburg [Sweden], and Minneapolis.

While with the Montreal Symphony, Dutoit helped turn them into one of North America’s leading ensembles, one that recorded extensively during his tenure, almost exclusively on Decca/London.  He is credited with two Grammy Awards, several Juno Awards—the Canadian equivalent of the Grammies—as well as close to 40 other recording prizes from such countries as Germany, Japan, France, and his homeland of Switzerland.

Dutoit has elected not to specialize in a particular era or style of music, instead presenting an eclectic range of conducting that has encompassed works from the Baroque to the post-modern eras, and has included both orchestral pieces and operas.  Starting in 1990, Dutoit has been artistic director and principal conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra’s annual summer festival, which is held in Saratoga Springs, New York.  In 1998, he was chosen music director of Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra, and he led that group on a number of tours across the United States, throughout Europe, and to China and parts of Southeast Asia.  He remains as that organization’s music director emeritus.

His interest in conducting opera has brought him to lead performances at London’s Covent Garden, Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, the Vienna State Opera, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera.  One of his most notable operatic endeavors involved conducting an acclaimed production of the monumental Berlioz work, Les Troyens [“The Trojans”] in Los Angeles.

Dutoit currently fulfills three contractual conducting positions.  He is chief conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra (through 2012), principal conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and music director of Switzerland’s Verbier Festival Orchestra.

Charles Dutoit conducts the National Orchestra of France in Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major (complete), with pianist Martha Argerich [1990]:

Edo de Waart [b. 1941] is a native of Amsterdam and easily the most prominent Dutch-born conductor of the late 20th century.  Unlike many of his contemporaries, who began their musical careers as instrumentalists, de Waart knew from a young age that his career path led exclusively to the podium.  He was 23 when he won New York’s Dimitri Mitropoulos award for conducting.  One of the prizes included a one-year term as Leonard Bernstein’s assistant conductor with the New York Philharmonic.  After returning home in 1965, de Waart was hired to fulfill the same post for his hometown orchestra—the Concertgebouw—that, at the time, was led by Bernard Haitink.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, de Waart spent much of his time in the United States, first as music director of the San Francisco Symphony [1977–1985] and then as music director of the Minnesota Symphony [1986–1995].  These semi-permanent posts, however, did not dissuade him from accepting a number of guest conducting stints with orchestras around the world.  His roster of appearances is impressive, including leading such ensembles as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and many others.

Edo de Waart accepted the post of artistic director and chief conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic in 2004, where he will remain until stepping down at the conclusion of the company’s 2011–12 season.  Overlapping that responsibility, he also was named music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in early 2008, and his contract has since been extended through the orchestra’s 2016–17 season.  He has lived in Middleton, Wisconsin, since 1999, which is the hometown of his wife, Rebecca Dopp.

Widely regarded as a champion of late twentieth century classical music, de Waart has premiered orchestral works by composers John Adams and Steve Reich.  He has also gained a significant reputation in opera, having spent four years as the chief conductor for Santa Fe Opera, beginning in summer 2007.  His recording of Adams’ opera Nixon in China is considered the touchstone for quality of that particular work.

Maestro de Waart leads the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in the conclusion of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” [2011]:

Arturo Toscanini [1867–1957] was born in Parma, Italy, the eldest of four children.  He attended the city’s Royal School of Music from the age of nine, graduating with honors nine years later with particular skill in playing the cello and in composition.  His photographic memory, legendary among his peers, became evident upon his first opportunity on the podium.  While performing as principal cellist for an Italian opera company on tour in South America, he was called upon to lead the evening’s performance of Aïda when the ensemble’s conductor became ill; he did so from memory!  Upon returning to Italy, Toscanini began to pursue a career in conducting by taking itinerant jobs with various regional opera houses around the country.  At Milan’s second opera house—the Teatro Del Verme—in 1892, he conducted the world premiere of Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci and, three years later, he achieved the same goal in Turin with Puccini’s signature opera, La bohème.

When he was 31, Toscanini assumed the prestigious post of music director at Milan’s famed Teatro alla Scala (La Scala), considered the most important opera house in Europe at the time.  In addition to providing Milanese with their first exposure to many great operas that would become strong elements of the repertoire—works by such leading composers of the day as Puccini, Mascagni, Cilea, Franchetti, and Giordano—he also revamped the opera house’s administrative functions and streamlined the way artists and musicians were hired.  He left this post in 1908 but returned during the 1920s for a short stint.  Toscanini led New York’s Metropolitan Opera from 1908 to 1915, a tenure that included the world premiere of La fanciulla del West by Giacomo Puccini (featuring Enrico Caruso).  He left his native land over his opposition to Fascist rule, settling in the United States.  He would return to Europe annually once WWII was over, but the New York City area remained his home for the rest of his life.

The NBC Orchestra was created expressly for Toscanini in 1937.  He conducted his first radio broadcast with that ensemble on Christmas Day of that year.  The studio in the company’s Rockefeller Center facility that served as the orchestra’s home was renovated in 1950 and is now used by NBC for its television show, Saturday Night Live.  The maestro served as the leader of the NBC Orchestra until his retirement in 1954 at the remarkable age of 87.  During his time with that organization he continued his penchant for presenting premieres of many major works.  These included the world premiere of Barber’s Adagio for Strings and the first U.S performance of Symphony No. 7 by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Toscanini leads the NBC Orchestra in a 1944 performance of the overture to the opera La forza del destino by Giuseppe Verdi (note that he conducts without using a score!):

Eugene Ormandy [1899–1985] was born to a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest.  His birth name was Jenö Blau, which he changed to the one we know today in 1921 after immigrating to the United States.  Ormandy began his study of the violin at age five and performed his first concert two years later.  His fame as a child musical prodigy is further cemented by the fact that he graduated with a master’s degree from the top Hungarian music academy at 14; he also earned a university degree at 20 in philosophy.  Upon his arrival in New York City the following year, Ormandy landed a position as a violinist for a theater orchestra.  In the years before “talkies,” many movie palaces employed full-size or scaled-back orchestras to accompany the silent films they showed.  Within a week he became the ensemble’s concertmaster (first-chair violinist) and eventually took over as its conductor.

In 1931, when Arturo Toscanini became ill while leading the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ormandy was invited to fill in for him.  Almost immediately he was asked to take over the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and he served as their conductor until 1936.  During his stay in the Upper Midwest, Ormandy forged a strong relationship with RCA Victor and recorded a number of classical works for them.  The quality of the music he created brought him further acclaim, and it was hardly a surprise when he was asked to return to Philadelphia as the orchestra’s assistant conductor (working under Leopold Stokowski) and then its music director.  Ormandy enjoyed a 44-year career with the Philadelphia Orchestra and is credited with making that ensemble into one of the most revered classical music organizations in the world.  He conducted anywhere from 100 to nearly 200 concerts per year, and he also led the orchestra in a number of international tours.  The orchestra performed in China in 1973, providing many of the thousands of Chinese audience members with their first-ever exposure to Western music performed live.  He continued his relationship with RCA Victor and made hundreds of records for them.  His favorite material—both in concert and on vinyl—included compositions of the late Romantics and early 20th century composers.  These included Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.

Among the many awards Ormandy received during his long career were the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom [1970] and Kennedy Center Honors [1982].  He was also named an honorary Knight of the British Empire in 1976.

Ormandy conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in an excerpt from The Planets by Gustav Holst:

Georg Solti [1912–1997] is another in a long line of Eastern European conductors who escaped the rise of anti-Semitism prior to WWII and made for himself a brilliant career in the West.  Solti was born in Hungary and studied the piano during his teen years before deciding that conducting offered a better path to professional musicianship.  He learned his craft by studying with such luminaries as Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodály.  He debuted on the podium at the Budapest Opera at the age of 26 by conducting a performance of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.  Solti fled to Switzerland the following year [1939], where he remained throughout the war.  He was then invited to accept the post of music director for the Bavarian State Opera and spent most of the 1950s leading various opera companies throughout Europe.

In 1961, Solti began a ten-year post as music director of The Royal Opera in London after first accepting and then abruptly resigning a similar position for the Los Angeles Philharmonic earlier the same year.  However, it was his next position—music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO)—that made him one of the most respected conductors during the latter half of the 20th century.  From 1969 through 1991, Solti led the CSO and appeared in more than 900 performances with that ensemble.  He encouraged the organization to take its first tour of Europe [1971] and was the driving force behind making the CSO one of the most recorded orchestras in the world, thanks to his close relationship with producers at Decca Records.  Solti has won more Grammy Awards (31) than any other person—including a Lifetime Achievement Award—and his remarkable discography includes the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler.  His recording for Decca of the Verdi opera Otello features Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Leo Nucci in the roles of Otello, Desdemona, and Iago respectively, and it is widely considered to be the finest version of this work produced in the past 30 years.

Solti became a naturalized British subject in 1972 and was given an honorary knighthood (KBE), which entitled him to be henceforth known as Sir Georg Solti.  Despite his official departure from the CSO in 1991, the orchestra’s management named him Music Director Laureate and welcomed him back regularly for various programs.  Solti died suddenly of a heart attack less than six weeks before his 85th birthday, which was to have been marked by his one-thousandth performance with the Chicago Symphony.

Georg Solti collaborates with actor Dudley Moore on the 1991 TV mini-series “Orchestra”: