Jean Fournet

Jean Fournet (1967)

Jean Fournet (born April 14, 1913 in Rouen , † November 3, 2008 in Hilversum ) was a French conductor.

Fournet studied flute and conducting at the Conservatoire de Paris and made his debut as a conductor in Rouen in 1936, where he got a permanent position two years later. In 1940 he went to Marseille , and from 1944 to 1957 he was musical director of the Opéra-Comique in Paris . At the same time he taught conducting here at the École normal supérieure .

In 1950 Fournet appeared for the first time with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest . He also became musical director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra . In the 1950s, he made well-known recordings a. a. from Fauré's Requiem and from Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles . In 1958 he appeared for the first time in Japan with Pelléas et Mélisande .

In 1961 he became conductor of the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest . With a stage version of Orff's Carmina Burana and Ravel's L'heure espagnole , he made his US debut in 1965 as an opera conductor at the Lyric Opera of Chicago . Further performances of French operas followed in this city.

In 1978 Fournet first appeared with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (TMSO), of which he was regular conductor from 1983 to 1986. Fournet made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1987 with the opera Samson et Dalila . In 1989 the TMSO made him its honorary conductor. After a European tour in 1988, he performed with the orchestra in Beijing in 2002. He gave his farewell concert with the TMSO in 2005.

Fournet recorded numerous important works on records, including the Requiem by Berlioz , La damnation de Faust and the Symphonie Fantastique , Boieldieu's The White Lady , the Nocturnes , La Mer and Iberia by Claude Debussy , Saint-Saëns ' Samson et Dalila and his Organ symphony and Massenet's Manon , as well as works by less famous composers such as Ernest Chausson , Bernard Zweers , Hendrik Andriessen and Hans Henkemans .