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Pierre Monteux, Maitre.

Article Excerpt
Pierre Monteux, Maitre. By John Canarina; forward by Neville Marriner. Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 2003. [372 p. ISBN 1-57467-082-4 $29.95.] Illustrations, discography, bibliography, index.

In his loving and detailed biography of Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), John Canarina seeks to shed new light on the conductor who was responsible for the premieres of Stravinsky's Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and The Nightingale; Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe; and Debussy's Jeux. While many know of Monteux's connection with the legendary premiere of The Rite of Spring, few perhaps think of him as the conductor who made the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra a professional ensemble, or one whose performances and recordings of works of Beethoven and Brahms were heralded by musicians and audiences alike.

Canarina, who was a student of Monteux, undertook this project to address the lacunae in published book sources about the conductor. Prior to Canarina's book, the only book sources were two by Monteux's third wife, Doris. As Canarina points out in his preface (p. 12), the first of her books, Everyone is Someone (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962) was written under the name of the couple's pet dog, Fifi Monteux. Doris published her next book It's All in the Music (New York: Farrar, Straus...

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