Streaming the Classics: Jean Martinon

Do you ever type a streaming query in Roon for a classical work or artist and are overwhelmed by the choices? Rather than clicking on any old recording or the first one you see, Audiophilia will make things a little easier for you and do the heavy listening.

These choices are for streaming only. Is the best in streaming also the best vinyl recording and performance? That’s for another article.

A few criteria:

1. The recording must be on Apple Music, Qobuz or Tidal HiFi.

2. It does not have to be HiRes or MQA.

3. No more than ten recommendations in no particular order.

The scene is a cold Saturday evening in Liverpool in 1975, a dapper man is standing by the window in the green room of Philharmonic Hall having just conducted a fine performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 with Het Residentie Orkest (Hague). A young man approaches him and asks for an autograph and the gentleman gives him a beautiful signature across the programme and smiles. The youth stammers out that he very much enjoys the conductor's recordings of Borodin and Ravel and after exchanging another smile leaves with the warm glow of achievement.

The youth was me and the conductor was the white-haired Jean Martinon. I still have the wonderful signature in my collection and I often think back to that evening when I had the chance to meet one of the greatest French conductors of the 20th century.

Martinon was born in January 1910 and died in March 1976 less than a year after my autograph meeting, but he left behind a legacy of fine recordings and performances of real quality and Gallic flair that are worth finding and studying if French and Russian repertoire are your thing.

His teachers included Charles Munch for conducting and Albert Roussel for composition and he left a body of work as both conductor and composer that is only now being considered a great achievement. His orchestra appointments included the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra and Lamoureux Orchestra and with his appointment to become Music Director of the Chicago Symphony in 1963, he was propelled into the limelight and used his fame and influence to support contemporary music and musicians for the rest of his life.

He succeeded Fritz Reiner who had turned the orchestra into the best in America and Martinon further expanded and grew its repertoire producing over a dozen of the best recordings the orchestra made before the Solti era. Sadly, as is the way of certain critics who can never be satisfied, the constant criticism of too much modern music in the programmes led to Martinon resigning in 1968 and returning to Europe were he remained based for the rest of his life working with French and other European ensembles.

Martinon’s recordings have been grouped in a series of boxes of his complete recordings for Decca, Warner, and Deutsche Grammophon and can be found on all the main streaming sites and many live performances on YouTube. I give a list of my top seven in importance but you may well have other favourites too. Enjoy!

Martinon studied under Roussel who was one of the most important French musicians working between the two world wars.

Martinon recorded a magnificent symphony full of gallic charm and drama.

Martinon was a very clear interpreter of ballet music and his affinity with de Falla shows through in every bar of this wonderful recording. His 1972 live recordings with the ORTF orchestra is also very fine and in stereo.

Martinon was a fine conductor of Russian music and his recordings are still very highly praised more than sixty years after he made them. The Paris Conservatoire orchestra always played well for him and he knew how to get the best from players having been an orchestral violinist in his student days.

My favourite recording of this symphony with lots of energy and guts which the LSO provides for Martinon in spades. It’s been around since 1958 and should be easy to find on LP and CD as well as streaming.

The ORTF orchestra gives Martinon every support in this now rarely heard symphony, but as he shows in his interpretation, it is a piece that should be played regularly in concert halls. Philippe Entremont gives a fine account of the Symphonic Variations in a recording made in 1971.

Martinon recorded these works with the LSO on RCA and it is playing of the highest order.

I’m sure James won’t mind if the editor has a little fun with his Streaming the Classics post.

Below are the two very large box sets available to purchase or to stream.

[Available to stream but also on an Analogue Productions reissue LP. And an absolute audiophile sonic blockbuster. The performances, too, are second to none. As you listen to the shockingly mature Symphony No. 1, remember the 17-year-old Shostakovich wrote the music as his graduation piece from the Leningrad Conservatoire!-Ed].