French Music For The Theater - Paul Paray

 

French Music For The Theater

Paul Paray conducts the

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra 

Dukas - The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Scherzo)

Fauré - Pelléas And Mélisande (incidental Music, Op. 80)

Roussel - The Spider's Feast (Symphonic fragments from the Ballet-Pantomime, Op. 17)

Mercury Classics MG 50035

1954

From the back cover: About Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Because of Paul Paray's tremendous vitality and kinetic energy, his very presence at an ordinary social gathering seems to electrify the atmosphere. Such is the sheer personal impact of this remarkable artist who in the fall of 1952 took over the musical destinies  of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra which Mercury is so proud on its Olympian Series recordings.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra came into existence in the spring of 1914. Four years later, when the renowned conductor-pianist, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, began his long association with the Orchestra, Detroit became the proud possessor of one of the nation's great symphonic organizations. 

The death of Gabrilowitsch in 1936 ushered in a difficult transition period for the fortunes of Detroit's orchestra; but by 1951 it had became very plain to all music-minded citizens of the Motor City that support of a great symphony orchestra must be the cultural responsibility of the entire community. On the evening of October 18, 1951, Paul Paray conducted the first concert of a completely reorganized ensemble.

Paul Paray, whose personal and musical dynamism has created such excitement in Detroit and elsewhere in the country where he has appeared as guest conductor, is a musician of singularly wide background and experience. In 1911 he was a Prix de Rome winner at the Paris Conservatory; but his subsequent musical activities were interrupted by combat duty in World War One. Only in 1918 did young Paray embark in earnest on a conductorial career. First he was appointed assistant conductor of the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris; then in 1923 he became that orchestra's permanent leader. Nine years later, Paray took over the famous Concerts Colonne in Paris, succeeding Gabriel Pierne. Paray's American debut was with the N. Y. Philharmonic Symphony at Lewisohn Stadium, where he scored a dazzling personal triumph and was acknowledged as one of Europe's greatest masters of the baton; but again the onset of war made it impossible for him to follow up his initial success. The war and occupation years in Paris saw him defying the Nazis at every turn, using his power of music and of his personal prestige as his principal weapons. Only when his own life was in immediate and deadly periled he "exile" himself to Monte Carlo until after the liberation, when Paris welcomed him home as a conquering hero.

It was in 1951 that Paul Paray, now an Officer of the Legion of Honor and a "Member d l'Institut", returned to America, there to conduct the first five concerts of the re-organized Detroit Symphony Orchestra. So overwhelming was the power and vitality of his musicianship that his appointment as permanent conductor was assured; and in the fall of 1952 Paray was the proud conductor of an expanded 104-piece Detroit Symphony boasting in its first chairs and in its ranks some of the finest musicians in the country.