Farewell, Manuel Rosenthal (1904-2003)

The French press agency AFP has announced the death of French composer-conductor Manuel Rosenthal :
http://actu.voila.fr//Archives/gens/5/ 030606153757.d6iipwkn.html

I didn't know he had been the only pupil of Ravel. Which makes that event even sadder.

says...

A great musician and a remarkable life. His last disc - the Gaite Parisienne he made for Naxos a few years ago - is one for the ages.

I wish someone would reissue the wonderful Ravel and Debussy records he made in the early 1960s, which Ades reissued on CD and have since disappeared.

Paul Goldstein

You might like to check Tower: I found the Debussy box there only a few months ago.

I would to add my voice to those who have already expressed their sadness at the passing of this monument to French music. Yes, his Adès CDs of the music of Debussy and his teacher Ravel are priceless, but so is just about everything else he recorded in his long life given to the greatness of his country's music. For those who appreciate his 1996 Naxos recording of his arrangement of Gaîté parisienne, I urge you to seek out his EMI recording of twenty years earlier. That indeed is the touchstone. I am fortunate enough to have heard excerpts of a performance he conducted of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (in Caracas, of all places), and it was like an entire new world opening up.

The United States treated him shamefully during his tenure as conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. He was actually emprisoned on Ellis Island for six weeks because it became known that Claudine Verneuil, who was his long-time companion and had always been considered his wife, was indeed not his lawfully wedded spouse. Can you imagine, the McCarthyites actually considered it their business to hound his wonderfully talented man from our shores because they presumed to disagree with a small detail of his personal life. Seattle had the last word, though, because he was invited back - in 1986 - to conduct the entire Ring cyle (!) (anybody got tapes of those performances?).

In 1937 Koussevitzky brought his Boston Symphony to Paris. He met with Rosenthal and asked him to go back to the United States with him, be his assistant, and presumably his successor. Rosenthal replied that he was deeply honored, but his mentor and teacher, Ravel, was very sick, and Rosenthal could not leave him. Two years later, after Ravel had died, Koussevitzky brought his orchestra back to Paris and met with Rosenthal again. This time Koussevitzky urged him all the more by telling him that if he remained in Europe, with the way things were going, his life could very well be in danger. Rosenthal's replay was another thanks, but that if his life were in danger, then France's very existence would also be in danger, and for this reason alone he could not leave. There followed years of privations, prisons and wanderings, but from that shambles emerged one of the greatest musicians this century has seen.

Adieu, Manuel. Tu nous manqueras.

I seem to recall that Manuel Rosenthal conducted at the Metopolitan Opera: didn't he conduct the first run of the triple bill called 'Parade'? This item was the first of three titles included in the show, the others being Poulenc's _Les mamelles de Tirésias_ and Ravel's _L'Enfant et les sortilèges_.

Rosenthal recorded one of the greatest performances of Debussy's 'La mer' that I know, equalled only by the recordings of Inghelbrecht and Toscanini. (There are other great ones, to be sure...) And I'm pretty certain there was an LP of his arrangement of _Gaité Parisienne_ conducted by Rosenthal. (Remington, perhaps?

How can it possibly be sad that he should have lived to be (almost) 99 and had as full a career as M. Rosenthal had? We should celebrate! Sad, only, perhaps that he made relatively few recordings (as most of his French colleagues did, alas!) and nobody will beat the drum from a Rosenthal Edition.

Not quite the only one: AFAIK, Maurice Delage, Vlado Perlemuter (who died a few months ago) and Germaine Tailleferre have been as well. (Of course, there were also some 'visiting students', such as RVW and Gershwin, but do they really count?)

Besides, the link you cite says: 'Rare élève de Maurice Ravel', which means that Ravel has had *few* students.

Rosenthal recorded three versions of his arrangement of Offenbach's music called 'Gaîté parisienne': with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra of Berlin in 1953 (released on a series of related labels, Rondolette, Vogue, Paris, etc.), with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra in May 1976 for EMI and finally with the same Monégasque orchestra in July 1996 for Naxos. As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, it is the EMI recording that is the best recording. I bought it less than a year ago from alapage. It's worth searching for.

Thus I stand corrected. Thanks for the details.

Crotchet (http://www.crotchet.co.uk) shows this as being re-released on the EMI Encore label on June 2, 2003. From the description: '...this performance has been regarded by many as the definitive interpretation since it first appeared in 1976'

Sad News. He conducted an all Ravel/Debussy program with the ONF in Athens in 1992 as replacement to Inbal who cancelled... We shall always be thankful to you, Ilahu .

I agree, his Ravel and Debussy as well as his last Offenbach recording on Naxos are treasures!