Charles Édouard Dutoit (born 7 October 1936) is a Swiss conductor. He is currently the principal guest conductor for the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia and co-director of the MISA Festival in Shanghai. In 2017, he became the 103rd recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal Award. Dutoit held previous positions with the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Tokyo NHK Symphony and the Orchestre National de France. As of 2017, he is conductor emeritus of the Verbier Music Festival Orchestra. He is an honorary member of the Ravel Foundation in France and the Stravinsky Foundation in Switzerland. In December 2017, following allegations of sexual assault, the Boston and San Francisco Symphonies cancelled his engagements. In a statement, Dutoit denied the charges.
Biography
Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied there, and graduated from the Conservatoire de musique de Genève, where he won first prize in conducting. Then he went to the Accademia Chigiana in Siena at the invitation of Alceo Galliera. In his younger days, he frequently attended Ernest Ansermet's rehearsals and had a personal acquaintance with him. He also worked with Herbert von Karajan at Lucerne as a member of the festival youth orchestra and studied at Tanglewood.
Dutoit began his professional music career in 1957 as a viola player with various orchestras across Europe and South America. In January 1959, he made his debut as a professional conductor with an orchestra of Radio Lausanne and Martha Argerich. From 1959 he was a guest conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. After this, he was the conductor for Radio Zurich until 1967, when he took over the Bern Symphony Orchestra from Paul Kletzki, where he stayed for 11 years.
While head of the Bern Symphony, he also conducted the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico from 1973 to 1975, and Sweden's Gothenburg Symphony from 1975 to 1978. Dutoit was principal guest conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra in the early 1980s.
In 1977, Dutoit became the artistic director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM). In the words of Glasgow-based music critic Kate Molleson: "A 20-year recording contract with Decca made the MSO the most recorded orchestra in the world, and the best of these recordings — Ravel's La Valse and Daphnis et Chloe, Debussy's La Mer, Stravinsky's French-period ballets — remain unsurpassed." Reaction to Dutoit joining the Montreal Symphony was positive. Peter G. Davis stated that Dutoit transformed the Montreal Symphony. New York Magazine wrote similarly about Dutoit, adding that he was noted for the championing of new Canadian music. Throughout these years, he called without success for a new symphony concert hall for Montréal. Dutoit resigned from the Montreal Symphony in April 2002, with immediate effect, after the Quebec Musicians Guild complained about what it called Dutoit's "offensive behaviour and complete lack of respect for the musicians". In January 2018, the OSM acknowledged ignoring complaints from musicians of verbal and 'psychological harassment' by Dutoit dating back to the 1990s. He did not return to the OSM as a guest conductor until 2016, in a concert at the new Maison Symphonique de Montréal.
Dutoit has received more than 40 international awards and distinctions, including two Grammy Awards (United States), several Juno Awards (Canada), the Grand Prix du Président de la République (France), the Prix mondial du disque de Montreux (Switzerland), the Amsterdam Edison Award, the Japan Record Academy Award, and the German Music Critics' Award. He and the OSM made many recordings for the Decca/London label.
Dutoit first conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980. From 1990 to 1999, he was music director of the orchestra's summer concerts at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. From 1990 to 2010, he was artistic director and principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer festival in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1991, he was made an Honorary Citizen of the city of Philadelphia. In February 2007, Dutoit was named the orchestra's chief conductor and artistic adviser, for a contract of four years, effective September 2008. Following the conclusion of his contract in Philadelphia in 2012, the orchestra named him its conductor laureate, as of the 2012–13 season.