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Who: D. Kern Holoman will speak about and sign copies of his book, “Charles Munch”

When and where: 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 27, at The Avid Reader, 617 Second St., and Sunday, May 6, at the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra concert at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

UC Davis music professor D. Kern Holoman has a new book out, and it’s getting quite a bit of attention.

Titled “Charles Munch,” the book is the first English-language biography of the influential conductor, who is most familiar to Americans as the leader of the Boston Symphony from 1949 to 1961. Munch and that orchestra recorded a slew of highly regarded albums for the RCA Living Stereo series, many of which are still available.

Munch was born in 1891 in Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine — a region that was, at the time, part of the German empire. He studied music in Berlin and Paris. During World War I, he was conscripted into the German army, witnessing a poison gas attack and sustaining a wound at Verdun.

After the war, Strasbourg eventually became part of France, and Munch became concertmaster of the famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, serving under Wilhelm Furtwängler and Bruno Walter. Munch wanted to handle the baton himself, and  made his conducting debut in Paris in 1932, at age 41.

He worked with the Société Philharmonique de Paris and the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservetoire, earning praise for his performances of the music of Hector Berlioz. He remained in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, refusing conducting engagements in Germany, and protecting members of his orchestra from the Gestapo.

In December 1946, Munch made his debut with the Boston Symphony, and when Boston’s longtime conductor Serge Koussevitzky retired in 1949, Munch got the job.

According to Holoman, “the young Leonard Bernstein (then 31) was Koussevitzky’s favorite candidate,” but the more experienced Munch prevailed.

Munch’s relaxed rehearsals and friendly manner with musicians in Boston were a contrast to Koussevitzky, who was known as a stern authoritarian.

“Munch had been an orchestral musician and was a loving man,” Holoman said. “He would sometimes let the musicians go early from rehearsal if he thought they were fully prepared for the concert, which would have been anathema under Koussevitzky.”

Munch’s 13 years at the helm in Boston included plenty of French music. But he also programmed quite a bit of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms.

“Here’s a guy who is still known for his Berlioz, and Ravel and Franck,” Holoman said. “But he was raised in the shadow of Bach, and the piece he most lived for was the Symphony No. 1 of Brahms.

“I would argue that he is a conductor of at least the stature of Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan,” Holoman said. “You only have to listen to the records. Munch created an astonishing corpus of RCA Living Stereo recordings — the Mendelssohn symphonies, the Franck symphony, the Berlioz recordings. He didn’t do Mahler. He loved Samuel Barber.”

In addition, Munch programmed dozens of world premieres and even more first American performances of new music. There was new music on almost every program during Munch’s years in Boston.

Munch stepped down from the Boston post in 1961, at the age of 70, and went back to France, where he became the first conductor of the Orchestre de Paris in 1967. He took that orchestra on an American tour, and it was at their performance in Raleigh, N.C., in November 1968 that the 21-year-old Holoman saw Munch conduct.

“They played the Berlioz ‘Symphonie Fantastique,’ which I was beginning to get interested in,” Holoman recalled.

It was Munch’s final concert; he was struck down by a heart attack in Richmond, Va., the following day.

Holoman would go on to join the UC Davis music faculty in 1975, and in 1989 he published “Berlioz,” a highly regarded profile of the composer’s life and music.

Holoman’s interest in writing a biography of Munch grew out of his research for “The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (1828-1967),” a 2003 book that chronicles the celebrated Paris Conservatory Orchestra, now the Orchestre de Paris.

Holoman’s research for that book led him to conclude that an English-language biography covering Munch’s entire career, and not just his years with that particular orchestra, was in order.

In the realm of “famous conductors,” Munch’s name is not as mooted nowadays as, say, that of Bernstein, who famously led the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969, or Arturo Toscanini, who directed the New York Philharmonic from 1928 to 1936, and was associated with the NBC Symphony from 1937 to 1954.

Unlike Bernstein and Toscanini — who frankly reveled in their celebrity status, and courted the press — Munch tended to avoid reporters and stay out of the limelight.

“He did not have any children, and his wife predeceased him, so unlike Toscanini or Bernstein, there were no family members interested in ‘the Munch legacy,’ ” Holoman said. “He didn’t have someone who was seeing to it that all of this (work he was doing) was perpetuated.

“He went back to France, he was managed by Columbia Artists, but by the time that Columbia was exerting almost total hegemony in classical music, Munch was mostly out of the picture.

“If you think ‘Well, here’s a guy that was not as big a deal as Bernstein,’ all you’ve got to do is go and listen to the records. You’ll find one breathtaking thing after another.”

And Munch did have protegés who are still with us today. Charles Dutoit, who conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Mondavi Center in February, is one. Seiji Ozawa, who would serve as conductor of the Boston Symphony for 29 years, is another.

Holoman’s book about Munch, published by Oxford University Press, earned him a long interview on BBC Radio 3, broadcast nationally in the United Kingdom, as part of a long feature about Munch. The Chicago Tribune reviewed Holoman’s biography favorably, with classical music critic John von Rhein concluding, “I cannot recommend it too highly.”

In Fanfare Magazine, reviewer Steven Kruger wrote, “It would be hard to imagine a better-written, more insightful, or more useful biography. This is the book we have been waiting for.”

Holoman also was interviewed in Sacramento on Tuesday morning  on Capital Public Radio’s “Insight” program, and that interview should be available online as archived audio at www.capradio.org/insight.

Holoman will speak about his book and sign copies at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 27, at The Avid Reader, 617 Second St. in downtown Davis.

In addition, Holoman will sign copies at the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra concert on Sunday, May 6, at the Mondavi Center. (Holoman is the orchestra’s conductor emeritus.) Concertgoers who want to buy a copy of the book for that event can contact Philip Daley, a staffer with the UCD music department, at (530) 752-7896. Daley can reserve a copy at 20 percent off the book’s list price.

— Reach Jeff Hudson at [email protected] or (530) 747-8055.

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Conductor Charles Munch is on par with such American luminaries as Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini, but he didn’t have family members to drive his legacy, D. Kern Holoman says. Courtesy photo

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