Charles Munch conducts Ravel and Brahms

Over half a century ago, the magnetic Franco-German conductor Charles Munch traveled to Tokyo with the Orchestre national de l’ORTF (today’s Orchestre national de France) for an unforgettable program of Ravel and Brahms. The concert opens with the Suite No. 2 adapted from Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé: a sweeping, lyrical ballet which the composer himself referred to as a “choreographic symphony.” The second work, Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, took the composer twenty years to write and is celebrated for its harmonic complexity and colorful symphonic palette. Besides their impressive orchestral techniques, both works are so emotionally resonant that Munch himself is visibly moved by the music as he conducts.  

A longtime conductor at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the co-founder of the Orchestre de Paris, Munch considered conducting a vocation, rather than a job, even referring to it as “a disease from which one only recovers by dying.” This intimate concert film, also an invaluable piece of musical historical footage, shows the normally reserved humanist become a charismatic giant of music once he takes to the podium.