Malgoire successor is named

Malgoire successor is named

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norman lebrecht

September 16, 2019

Seventeen months after the death of baroque pioneer Jean-Claude Malgoire , his successor has been appointed from the mainstream.

The new artistic and general director of the Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing, founded by Malgoire, will be the exceptionally busy François-Xavier Roth, presently Generalmusikdirektor of the city of Cologne and principal guest at the London Symphony Orchestra.

French Baroque just went broke.

Comments

  • asylumkeeoer says:

    Went broke? Things have rarely looked better for French baroque – with Minkowski, Christie, and Niquet all fighting for a share of a crowded market, not to mention the performances of Rameau, Lully & Co we get from non-French practitioners like Savall.

    • MusicBear88 says:

      Don’t forget the magnificent Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée!

      • Ed says:

        And don´t forget Raphaël Pichon, Cristoph Rousset, Vinceny Dumestre, Hugo Reyne and Sebastian Daucé.

      • jamesay says:

        “magnificent Emmanuelle Haïm ” ?Really? .. her conducting is pedestrian … she confuses “period” with “dead slow” Painful to listen to. I attended a good number of her concerts in both London and France when she was the zeitgeist female conductor and truly found her work boring and uninspiring. I understand we all have different taste and expectations but “magnificent” and “Emmanuelle Haïm ” do not belong in the same sentence for me.

  • Andreas B. says:

    Congratulations!
    From all I have heard, FXR is a highly respected and competent conductor.

    “French Baroque just went broke” is a bit rich, surely?

    After all, this is a French born and educated conductor, with an impressive track record.
    He even founded his own period band Les Siecles in 2003.

    What is the problem with also being an accomplished “mainstream” conductor?

    Ton Koopman, John Eliot Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Philippe Herreweghe, Reinhard Goebel et al. work(ed) with modern “mainstream” symphony orchestras.

    Why not welcome diversity, exchange of ideas and mutual inspiration?

    Why not judge by listening to actual music instead of categorising and labelling artists?

  • John Rook says:

    France is not short of specialist baroque ensembles.

  • Anon says:

    FXR is wonderful to work with. Many congratulations.

  • Edgar says:

    “French Baroque just went broke.”

    Quelle grossière exagération !

  • Marc says:

    Is there some other evidence that FXR is planning on changing the ALT to a more ‘mainstream’ ensemble? Am not in a position to set everything else aside and go searching through the French media for the past six months, if there is.

    • Mathieu says:

      ALT is not even an ensemble; it’s a venue, whose programming has always been quite diverse (both in terms of the ensembles they invite to play and the repertoire they explore)

      Mr Lebrecht’s post is misleading at best.

  • Nathaniel Rosen says:

    I prefer baroque music with down-beats played on a down-bow. There are still a few of us that revere the genius of Francois Tourte, par example cellist Alban Gerhardt.

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