Daring perspective

The American Magnum photographer Constantine “Costa” Manos is also a great lover of classical music. As a young man he first learnt clarinet and later flute. It was with photography, however, where he became truly virtuous. His series about the Boston Symphony Orchestra is among his earlier works and caused quite a stir when it was published as a book. “When I was 19, I was hired to be the official photographer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at their summer home at Tanglewood, Massachusetts. Those were heady days for a young music-loving photographer from the South. Present at Tanglewood at that time were Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Munch, Isaac Stern, Rudolf Serkin, Pierre Monteux, and many other great musicians. I think I was especially popular with the musicians because I was the first photographer to shoot the orchestra with available light, no flash. Also, I was told that I had a charming southern accent,” the photographer remembers.

Over the following years, Manos continued to work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and in 1961 published a selection of the photographs in his first photo book, Portrait of a Symphony. In an interview decades later, the photographer still recalls the story of how the portrait of the famous conductor Charles Munch (1891-1968) came about. The French conductor of Alsatian descent was the orchestra's Music Director from 1949 to 1962.“There was a trapdoor directly over the conductor’s spot, and I went there early and was really nervous about doing so. The ceiling was thick, but there was this trapdoor that looked right down on the spot where the conductor stood. I clamped my camera with a telephoto lens onto the edge of the trapdoor, and shot that picture from above during a concert. Of course, I had to be very careful about doing it during loud sequences, because it did make a bit of noise. For me the picture is a classic. It symbolizes classical music and the work of conductors.”