Paul Paray

Paul Paray (born Le Tréport, May 24, 1886 - died Monte Carlo, October 10, 1979) was a French conductor, organist and composer. He is best remembered in the United States for being the resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for more than a decade.

His father, Auguste, was a sculptor and organist at St. Jacques church, and leader of an amateur musical society. He put young Paul in the society's orchestra as a drummer. Later, Paul Paray went to Rouen to study music with the abbots Bourgeois and Bourdon, and organ with Haelling. This prepared him to enter the Paris Conservatoire. In 1911, Paul Paray won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata "Yanitza".

As World War I started, Paul Paray heeded the call to arms and joined the French Army. In 1914 he was a prisoner of war at the Darmstadt camp, where he composed a string quartet.

After the war, Paray was music director of the orchestra of the Casino de Cauterets, which included players from the Lamoureux Orchestra. This was a springboard for him to conduct the Lamoureux Orchestra. Later he was music director of the Concerts Colonne and the Monte Carlo Orchestra.

In 1922 Paray composed the ballet "Adonis troublé". In 1931 he wrote the "Mass for the 500th Anniversary of the Death of Joan of Arc", which was premiered at the cathedral in Rouen to commemorate the quincentennary of Joan of Arc's martyr death. In 1935 he wrote his "Symphony No. 1 in C major", which was premiered at the Concerts Colonne in 1931, and in 1940 his "Symphony No. 2 in A major".

Paray made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in 1939. In 1952 he was appointed music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducting them in numerous recordings for Mercury Living Presence.

Paray could and did conduct the entire orchestral repertoire well, but he specialized in the French symphonic literature. One of Paray's most renowned recordings, made in October 1957, is that of the Saint-Saëns' "Symphony No. 3 in C minor". The circumstances surrounding the recording were fortuitous. Paray had built the Detroit Symphony Orchestra into one of the world's most distinguished. Marcel Dupré, a friend and fellow student from childhood, was organist for the session. Dupré, as a young student, had pulled the organ stops for the composer Camille Saint-Saëns in a performance of the Symphony No. 3 in Paris, and the organ of Ford Auditorium in Detroit was well suited to the work. As well as being among the most authoritative readings of the work, the original analogue recording on the Mercury label remains an audiophile reference in vinyl, and the analogue-to-digital transfer produced by the original recording director Wilma Cozart for compact disc is also available from Mercury (recording number 432 719-2).

External links

* [http://www.classicalnotes.net/columns/paray.html "A Frenchman in Detroit"] Bibliography (in French): Jean-Philippe Mousnier: "Paul Paray", Editions L'Harmattan (1998).