SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
The Lamoureux concerts
The Lamoureux concerts have had from the beginning a very different character from the Colonne concerts. That difference lies partly in the personality of the two conductors, and partly in the fact that the Lamoureux concerts, although of later date than the Colonne concerts by less than ten years, represent a new generation in music. The progress of the musical public was singularly rapid: hardly had they explored the rich treasure-house of Berlioz’s music than they were making discoveries in the world of Wagner. And in that world they needed a new guide, who had intimate knowledge of Wagner’s art and of German art in general. Charles Lamoureux was that guide. In 1873 he conducted special performances of Bach and Händel, given by the Societé de l’Harmonie sacrée. After leaving the conductorship of the Opera, he inaugurated, on 21 October, 1881, at the Château-d’Eau theatre, the Société des Nouveaux Concerts. These concerts had at first very comprehensive programmes of every kind of music and every kind of school. At the first concert there were works of Beethoven, Händel, Gluck, Sacchini, Cimarosa, and Berlioz. In the first year Lamoureux had Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed, as well as a large part of Lohengrin, and numerous works of young French musicians. Various compositions of Lalo, Vincent d’Indy, and Chabrier, were performed there for the first time. But it was especially to the study of Wagner’s works that Lamoureux most gladly devoted himself. It was he who gave the first hearings of Wagner in their entirety in France, such as the first and second act of Tristan, in 1884-1885. The Wagnerian battle was still going on at that time, as the notice printed at the head of the programme of Tristan shows.
«The management of the Société des Nouveaux Concerts is desirous of avoiding any disturbance during the performance of the second act of Tristan, and urgently and respectfully begs that the audience will abstain from giving any mark of their approval or disapproval before the end of the act.»
The same year, in the Eden theatre, to which the concerts had been transferred, Lamoureux conducted, for the first time in Paris, the first act of the Walküre. In these concerts the tenor, Van Dyck, made his début; later, he was one of the leading performers at Bayreuth. In 1886-1887 Lamoureux rehearsed and conducted the only performance of Lohengrin at the Eden theatre. Disturbances in the streets prevented further performances. Lamoureux then established himself in the concert-room of the Cirque des Champs Élysées, where for eleven years he has given what are called the Concerts-Lamoureux. He continued to spread the knowledge of Wagner’s works, and has sometimes had the help of some of the most celebrated of the Bayreuth artists, among others, that of Mme. Materna and Lilli Lehmann. At the end of the season of 1897 Lamoureux wished to disband his orchestra in order to conduct concerts abroad. But the members of the orchestra decided to remain together under the name of the Association des Concerts-Lamoureux, with Lamoureux’s son-in-law, M. Camille Chevillard, as conductor. But Lamoureux was not long before he returned to the conductorship of the concerts, which had now returned to the Château-d’Eau theatre; and a few months before his death, in 1899, he conducted the first performance of Tristan at the Nouveau theatre. And so he had the happiness of being present at the complete triumph of the cause for which he had fought so stubbornly for nearly twenty years.[220]
[Footnote 220: My statements may be verified by the account published in the Revue Éolienne of January, 1902, by M. Léon Bourgeois, secretary of the Committee of the Association des Concerts-Lamoureux.]
this was: The Lamoureux Concerts
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