Dutoit Charles, *7 October 1936 Lausanne, Swiss conductor. He studied at the conservatoire in Lausanne (violin, piano, conducting) and Geneva (viola and conducting, graduation in 1958); in 1959 he attended a conducting course under Ch. Münch at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) and began working with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. From 1966 to 1977 he was artistic director of the Berner Symphonieorchester; from 1973 to 1975 he conducted the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México; and from 1975 to 1978 he led the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Since 1977, he has been principal conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, with whom he has made numerous recordings, mainly of symphonic repertoire from the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries (N. Rimsky-Korsakov, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel, de Falla, Gershwin, Holst, Bartók, Kodály, Poulenc, Prokofiev); particularly noteworthy are the complete recording of Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens (1993) and the first recording of Poulenc’s complete orchestral works, featuring pianist P. Rogé (1998). During Dutoit’s marriage to M. Argerich, they performed together frequently, including in 1971 at the National Philharmonic (Bartók’s Dance Suite, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition). Dutoit is one of the most highly regarded conductors of his generation. His interpretations are characterised by an emphasis on the structural qualities of the work and attention to the precision of the orchestral sound.
