Even as I am in the process of honoring the musicians we lost in 2016 on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com, I learn of the first major musical loss of the new year. The conductor Georges Prêtre has died.
Prêtre studied under André Cluytens, among others, at the Paris Conservatory. He made his conducting debut in Marseilles in 1946. He was director of the Opéra-Comique in Paris from 1955-1959. There, he gave the premiere of “La voix humaine” by Francis Poulenc, a composer with whom he would become closely associated. He went on to conduct at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and La Scala, Milan.
He was a regular at the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1959-1971. He was music director of the Paris Opera for the 1970-71 season. He later became principal conductor of the Vienna Symphony, from 1986-1991.
Prêtre was invited to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in its popular New Year’s Day concert twice, in 2008 and 2010. To date, he is the only French conductor to have done so.
Among his other notable achievements, he conducted the world premiere of Joseph Jongen’s “Symphonie Concertante for Organ and Orchestra,” with Virgil Fox and the Paris Opera Orchestra, in 1959.
Prêtre was 92 years-old. It is with regret that I bid him adieu.