Debussy's "La mer" excerpt conducted by Charles Munch with the Boston Symphony, 1962Maurice Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé-- Charles Munch rehearses with the Hungarian State Orchestra, 1966. Plus, excerpts from Boston Symphony concert, 1962Charles Munch (originally, Münch) was born Sept. 26, 1891, Strassburg, Ger. [now Strasbourg, France], died Nov. 6, 1968, Richmond, Va., U.S. He was in the German army in WW1, got gassed at Peronne and wounded at Verdun, then became a naturalized French citizen after his return to Alsace.During WWII he was music director of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris, and refused to collaborate with the Nazis. He helped the Resistance.In 1946 he made his first trip to the US, guest conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He became their principal conductor from 1949 to 1962.He then returned to France and founded the Orchestre de Paris. He was on tour in America with this orchestra when he suffered a heart attack and died in his hotel room.He was a violinist, and I loved the beautiful string playing he got out of his orchestras as much as his celebrated performaces of French repetoire. One of my favorite records is his of the Tchaikovsky "Serenade for Strings".In the rehearsal excerpt you see his easy way with musicians---and the spontaneity, colour, and elegance for which his music-making was famous."Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence defines. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious. Man's right to speak this language is for me the most precious gift that has been bestowed upon us....Is it paradoxical to assert that my duties and disappointments rather than my successes are the basis of my infinite love for my work? This unremitting toil to which I have bound myself for so long, all the manuscripts I have sat bent over until dawn, all the orchestras whose enthusiasm I have had to arouse even during wartime rehearsals in halls invaded by freezing cold morning fogs, all these have taught me a lesson in compassion. My profession gives me opportunity for intense self-expression and freedom for any flight of the imagination. To a reserved, withdrawn, and timid person it offers the chance to realize his dreams in sound. Those who listen may find different things in these sounds-expressions of their own desires, their own emotions, their own thoughts. A conductor, in giving a faithful reproduction and exact translation of the written notes, can re-create the thought and emotion of an unknown person-the composer-, which can sometimes be a transfiguring experience."-- Taken from "I am a Conductor" by Charles Munch, translated by Leonard Burkat.

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