Ernest Ansermet - Biography
Ernest Ansermet was born on November 11th 1883 in Vevey Switzerland and died February 20th 1969 in Geneva. Ansermet was trained in mathematics and became a professor of that subject at the University of Lausanne. He started his conducting career in Montreux in 1912 and soon became a staff conductor for Serge Diaghilev’s legendary Ballet Russe from 1915 to 1923. While there he became friends with Ravel and Debussy and had a close creative relationship with Stravinsky who was them living in Switzerland. Ansermet founded the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva in 1918 and he would remain their conductor till his death 51 years later. Though Ansermet was a fine conductor of the Germanic Classical as his fine recordings of Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms attest to his lasting reputation was as a conductor of French, Russian and Spanish repertoire. Ansermet was well known in France and Switzerland and Germany prior to the Second World War but his reputation didn’t spread much beyond, though he was highly respected by contemporary musicians and knowledgeable critics.
This was all to change when he started a series of recordings on Decca/London mostly with the Suisse Romande but some with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. Decca had a new recording technique FFR (full frequency recording) that dramatically increased the frequency range of recordings. Decca while an English company had its classical repertoire center in Geneva and was able to make recordings inexpensively in Geneva. Besides a great conductor and a fine orchestra they had the acoustically superb Geneva Victoria Hall. Ansermet’s early recordings of Stravinsky, Ravel and Debussy were critical sensations in England and America. Once Ansermet started recording on Long Play vinyl in 1950 the success of the series were enhanced. In 1952 he made a great recording of Debussy’s opera Pelleas et Melisande and superb recording of Falla’s Three Cornered Hat both with frequent performing partner Swiss Soprano Suzanne Danco. Ansermet was also a superb conductor of the Russian Nationalist School and his recordings of Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev have not lost any of their freshness after many years. Being Swiss he also was an advocate for Swiss composers as witnessed to by his superb recordings of music by Artur Honegger, Ernest Bloch and Frank Martin.
Besides Stravinsky his sympathy for modernism extended to Bartok but definitely not to the Schoenberg School. In 1961 he wrote book using his background in mathematics to argue against the validity of the atonal system. This caused a break with Stravinsky who became a composer of 12 tone music and was a particularly powerful advocate for Webern. This tension between the two was brewing for a while because Ansermet’s readings on record of Stravinsky were often at odds with the composers recordings. These two strong willed men came to a partial rapprochement initiated by Stravinsky before Ansermet’s death.
Ansermet re-recorded most of his repertoire in stereo along with additions of works by Berlioz, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and even some Sibelius and Wagner. Ansermet could be a very contentious man and Decca producer John Culshaw remembered some profanity laced sessions with English orchestras. As far as his personal appearance American critic/compose summed it up when reviewing a concert in New York around 1950, he noted that Ansermet resembled the King in a pack of playing cards. A great conductor who did invaluable service to recorded music.
