Lorne Munroe

Education and Training

At only 3 years old, Lorne Munroe took his first cello lessons on his father’s violin, to which his teacher, Dezsö Mahalek, had attached a “leg.” At 10 years old, he won the senior cello class at the Manitoba (Winnipeg) Music Competition Festival. Sponsored by Arthur Benjamin, that year's adjudicator, Munroe attended the Royal College of Music in London from 1937 to 1939 on scholarship with Ivor James. In 1939, he gave a joint recital with Benjamin for the Young Men's Musical Club of Winnipeg. The program included Benjamin's Sonatina, written for the 14-year-old cellist the previous year. From 1939 to 1947, he studied on scholarship at the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia, with Felix Salmond, Orlando Cole, and, before and after service in World War II, as a protégé of Gregor Piatigorsky.

Career Highlights

Lorne Munroe won the only Naumburg Award granted in 1949 and as a result made his formal New York recital debut 16 November at Town Hall, playing works of Haydn, Weber, Dvořák, and Fauré. He was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra (1949–50) and principal cello of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (1950–51) before joining the Philadelphia Orchestra as principal cello in 1951. With the latter, he was director of the Amerita String Orchestra, a 15-player ensemble drawn from the Philadelphia Orchestra which performed in the United States and Europe under the sponsorship of the American-Italy Society of Philadelphia. Munroe became principal cello of the New York Philharmonic on the invitation of Leonard Bernstein in 1964 and continued in that position in 1991, appearing frequently as soloist with the orchestra in the concertos of Saint-Saëns, Elgar, Dvořák, Kabalevsky, Britten, etc.

He taught at Temple University, at the Musical Academy in Philadelphia, and beginning in 1964, at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1991 he continued to teach at Juilliard, and also taught at the Manhattan School of Music. He performed as concerto soloist or recitalist in Toronto (Dvořák Concerto, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, 1 May 1970), Ottawa, Winnipeg (Schumann Concerto, 17 November 1978), and Vancouver and in major cities of Europe, Israel, and Japan.

After Munroe's performance in Strauss’ Don Quixote (20 January 1951, at Carnegie Hall) with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteux, Virgil Thomson wrote in the Herald Tribune: “Lorne Munroe, the cellist, impressed ... with his fine, sombre tone and his extraordinary ability to play in tune. I don't remember ever hearing this work read so enchantingly”; and Olin Downes, in the New York Times, wrote: “Most prominent and commanding, of course, was Mr. Munroe. He has a noble, sonorous tone, with every possible gradation in it, and there was every characterization and sensitivity in his performance.”

Family

Lorne Munroe’s sister Sheila Munroe and brother Gilbert Munroe were accomplished pianists.