Riviera Symphony

The fact that it was given on July 5th was not the only unusual feature of last week's Independence Day concert on the hangar deck of the carrier Independence off Cannes, The ship's jet engine noise absorbers were so effective that the music of the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra had to be amplified. And the ventilators made such a racket that they had to be turned off, leaving Conductor Louis Fremaux and Guest Soprano Teresa Stich-Randall to dissolve in perspiration.

But the program, a bouillabaisse of Copland, Gershwin, Kern, Victor Herbert, Leonard Bernstein and Giuseppe Verdi, was an unqualified success. When the orchestra broke bouncily into the score of West Side Story, even the guests of honor, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, could not help tapping their feet. Despite the hazards of the location and the hackneyed nature of the music, the long concert was one more demonstration that under 40-year-old Conductor Fremaux the once-moribund Monte Carlo Orchestra is fast becoming one of Europe's most gifted ensembles.

In its palmy years, from 1890 to 1925, the Monte Carlo gave the world premieres of major works by Berlioz, Ravel, Faure, Honegger, Poulenc and Milhaud, attracted the famed Diaghilev Ballet. More recently it had become little more than a second-rate casino group catering to the international gambling set. Then, six years ago, in an effort to alter the popular, frivolous image of Monte Carlo as a playboy playground. Rainier set out to refurbish his concert orchestra. His first--and canniest--move was to hire ex-French Foreign Legion Officer Fremaux.

People & Wars. Fremaux had come back to civilian life from a Legion tour of duty in Algeria just as Rainier began conductor hunting. Born in northern France, Fremaux had studied piano briefly at Valenciennes Conservatory before World War II sent him into the Maquis. He went to St.-Cyr military academy at war's end, served in Indo-China under General LeClerc. The experience, he thinks, was not altogether foreign to a musical career: "I learned a lot from my years in Indo-China; it was my discovery of the world; I saw people and wars." He was tempted to become a career Legion officer, but finally decided to return to music, resigned his commission and entered the Paris Conservatory in 1949.

Fremaux at first wanted to compose, but decided that it did not give him enough chance to "exteriorize myself." He turned to conducting and graduated with the conservatory's Premier Prix for leading an orchestra. An offer from an independent record company to make recordings of 18th century French music led Fremaux to his first Grand Prix du Disque (in 1955) and gave him a national reputation. But when he was called back to the Legion in 1956 for duty in Algeria, he had yet to show what he could do in a permanent conducting post.

Profile & Performance. His first step in Monte Carlo was to clear out the deadwood; he got rid of aging, second-rate musicians and built an orchestra with an average age of only 37. Fremaux upped salaries, extended the orchestra season to eleven months, introduced a cycle of summer concerts in Rainier's Grimaldi Palace that now attracts such guest performers as Bernstein, Van Cliburn, Artur Rubinstein. It was only after three years of arduous drilling that Fremaux felt he was ready to tour with his orchestra--with a repertory that leans heavily on 18th century French music, the Russian and German romantics and "Mediterranean music"--the music of Italy and Spain.

A trim athletic man who moves gracefully on the podium, Fremaux seems to mesmerize female concertgoers with some of the matinee idol appeal of a Bernstein or a Von Karajan. If his orchestra continues to improve (he does not think it will reach its peak for another several years), Fremaux plans to try out his appeal in the U.S.--hopefully, in the winter of 1964.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.