Maurice Abravanel

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Maurice de Abravanel (from 1938 on he called himself just Maurice Abravanel; born January 6, 1903 in Thessaloniki , Greece ; died September 22, 1993 in Salt Lake City , Utah ) was an American conductor of Greek origin.

Life

Time before 1933

Maurice Abravanel comes from a famous Sephardic family who was expelled from Spain in 1492 (see Isaak Abravanel ). His parents were Edouard de Abravanel and Rachel Bitty Abravanel. They had four children: Inez, Gaston, Ernest and Maurice. In 1909 the family went to Lausanne , where his father worked as a pharmacist. Here he met Ernest Ansermet , who lived in the same house, a promoter of his musical talent. He played the piano four hands with Maurice and introduced him to the music of modern composers such as Darius Milhaud and Igor Stravinsky , whom he also got to know personally through Ansermet. During this time he wrote concert reviews for a newspaper and began to compose. At the instigation of his father, he studied medicine from 1920 at the University of Lausanne , according to other sources in Zurich , and directed a student orchestra. Following Ferrucio Busoni's advice, he went to Berlin to study music theory with Kurt Weill . He worked closely with Weill for a long time. In Berlin he got to know Bruno Walter , Paul Hindemith and Bertolt Brecht , among others . Walter introduced him to the music of Gustav Mahler and became a great advocate of Abravanel. He was initially deputy conductor at a theater in Berlin, whose orchestra held weekly concerts without rehearsals. Here he was encouraged to develop a clear striking technique, this striking technique was later praised by musicians all over the world.

Period from 1933 to 1945

After the NSDAP came to power in 1933, he emigrated to Paris with his friend Kurt Weill. In 1933 and 1934 he conducted the Monteux 'Orchester Symphonique de Paris, was musical director of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Georges Balanchines Les Ballets . On June 7, 1933 Abravanel conducted the world premiere of The Seven Deadly Sins at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées . In the next few years he conducted several orchestras in Europe , such as in Geneva, London and Rome. At the Paris Opera he conducted, among other things, a performance of Don Giovanni . He went to Australia with the British National Opera Company . He conducted both the Sidney Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. At the Australian Broadcasting Corporation he conducted several concerts and twenty-six radio performances of complete operas in English after working for the opera company. Here he played the orchestral works by Ralph Vaughan Williams . Then he got to New York City . At the suggestion of Bruno Walter and Wilhelm Furtwängler, he was the youngest conductor to be engaged at the Metropolitan Opera . He made his debut here on December 6, 1936 with Samson et Delila by Camille Saint-Saëns . During his time at the MET he set the unprecedented record of conducting seven performances of five different operas in nine days. After two years he moved to Broadway at his own request. This step was not understood by the public and viewed as a step backwards. His admiration for Kurt Weill and the attachment to him prompted Abravanel to take this step anyway. Abravanel later stated that this decision prevented a possible engagement with the renowned Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and that his path initially led away from the large symphony orchestras. On Broadway, he directed the world premieres of Knickerbocker Holiday , Lady in the Dark , One Touch of Venus and Street Scene . Here he also conducted Weill's Threepenny Opera . In 1943 he obtained US citizenship. On concert tours through North America, he conducted concerts in Montreal , Toronto , Washington, DC , Chicago and concerts by the New York City Orchestra between musical performances . For one season each he was at the Chicago Civic Opera and at the Opera Nacional in Mexico City .

Period from 1946 to 1993

In 1946, immediately after the Second World War , Abravanel went to Australia again. He led a concert series of the Sydney Symphony Society with ten concerts. After a year he decided to return to North America. Back in New York City, he became aware that the Utah Symphony Orchestra was looking for a new conductor. Abravanel was immediately interested in the position. His manager Arthur Judson (1881–1975), who also represented Arturo Toscanini , Bruno Walter, and Leopold Stokowski , urgently advised him against it. He even went so far as to tell the Utah orchestra management that Abravanel would never go to Utah. Other friends like Kurt Weill tried to convince him that this wasn't a good plan. Judson has now approached Abravanel with a very lucrative five-year contract with Radio City Music Hall with a recently enlarged orchestra. The annual salary for this position was among the highest that a conductor could earn at the time. Abravanel declined the contract on the grounds that this position would not help him to perform the music he wanted to perform himself. On a concert tour to San Francisco, he made a personal stop in Salt Lake City and spoke to those responsible for the orchestra. They offered Abravanel the job. Abravel still had an offer to make a film with the music of Edvard Grieg in Los Angeles and to accept a well-paid offer from the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Since he was enthusiastic about the position in Salt Lake City himself, he declined the other offers and accepted the position.

First, he put standard works never before performed in Utah on the program. He began with Beethoven's symphonies, Brahms's second symphony and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. He always performed contemporary works in his concerts, such as Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings , Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, and William Schuman's Slideshow for Orchestra. Many became standard works of the 20th century. He continued this path successfully even against critics. Early on, he sought to get close to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and its director Spencer Cornwall in order to perform Beethoven's Ninth together , but was rejected on the grounds that the church choir and the state orchestra should not work together. This separation lasted until his joint concert in 1976. Cornwall also tried to prevent the orchestra from using the Salt Lake Tabernacle . The next few years were extremely difficult financially. In 1949 the orchestra was insolvent and the concert activities of the orchestra could only be continued thanks to Abravanel's enormous commitment to recruiting sponsors. Wendell Ashton, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , served on the orchestra's board of directors for stability . This was able to open doors for cooperation with the church and also mobilize many young sponsors who are close to the church. Now the orchestra began to grow. Three points in Abravanel's philosophy were largely responsible for this. First, it was the important role that he devoted to contemporary music, second, the musical education of society through school concerts, local concerts and youth concerts, and third, the use of sound recordings in marketing the orchestra. The popularity of Abravanel also helped many well-known artists to work with the orchestra. He was able to win over conductors such as Pierre Monteux , Henry Mancini , Arthur Fiedler and Aaron Copland, but also his friend the actor Danny Kaye and many instrumentalists such as Claudio Arrau , Arthur Rubinstein , Gina Bachauer , Itzhak Perlman and Mstislav Rostropovich to work with the orchestra. Composers he included in his programs were Kurt Weill, Ernest Bloch , Arthur Honegger , Eric Satie , Edgar Varése and his friend Darius Milhaud . Through his personal commitment, he developed the ensemble, initially only known locally, into a world-famous orchestra. From 1954 to 1980 he directed the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara . From 1970 to 1976 was a member of the National Council of the Arts and vice chairman of the. American Symphony Orchestra League . In 1979 he retired with the Utah Symphony Orchestra. In 1981 he was named Artist in Residence for Life at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood . He then attended the Tanglewood Festival every summer as a teacher and mentor. Maurice Abravanel died on September 22, 1993 at Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City. On September 28, 1993, a memorial service co-designed by the Utah Symphony Orchestra and the Utah Symphony Chorus was held at Maurice Abravanel Hall.

Abravanel was married to the opera singer Maria Schacko , also Friedel Schacko, and was thus the son-in-law of the actress and singer Hedwig Schacko . After their divorce, he married Lucy Menasse Carasso (1902–1985) in 1947. After her death he married Carolyn Firmage.

The American Symphony Orchestra League awarded him the Gold Baton Award in 1981 . In 1991, George HW Bush awarded him the National Medal of Arts . Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City was named after him in 1993.

Maurice Abravanel's recordings

Abravanel and the Utah Symphony Orchestra were the first US orchestra to publish a complete recording of Mahler's symphonies before Leonard Bernstein .

Abravanel had a contract with Vanguard Records . Here he published first recordings of the works of Judith and Le Roi David von Honnegger. The most important of his more than 125 recordings include complete recordings of the four symphonies by Johannes Brahms (this 3-CD set also includes the tragic overture, the academic festival overture and the variations on a theme by Joseph Haydn ) as well as the nine symphonies by Gustav Mahler (11-CD set including the Adagio of the unfinished tenth symphony). A very expressive, emphatic style emerges in both recordings, in which the entire work is interpreted starting from its climax and structured towards it, while lyrical passages are pushed into a secondary role. Both recordings were made with the Utah Symphony Orchestra.

In 1950 he won for Regina as Best Conductor a Tony Award . His recordings with the Utah Symphony Orchestra have been nominated three times at the Grammy Awards : 1962 for the recording of Le Roi David, 1978 for Sacred Service by Bloch and 1979 for the recording of the Psalm Symphony .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maurice Abravanel (Conductor) - Short Biography. Retrieved September 19, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Helge Grünewald:  Abravanel, Maurice. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 1 (Aagard - Baez). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1111-X  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Maurice Abravanel | American conductor . In: Encyclopedia Britannica . ( britannica.com [accessed September 19, 2017]).
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Obituary: Maurice Abravanel . In: The Independent . October 21, 1993 ( independent.co.uk [accessed September 19, 2017]).
  5. ↑ a b c Bernd Sponheuer, Wolfram Steinbeck: Mahler manual . Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-00357-7 ( google.de [accessed September 19, 2017]).
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Alex Ross: Maurice Abravanel, 90, Utah Symphony Leader . In: The New York Times . September 23, 1993, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed September 19, 2017]).
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Maurice Abravanel - School of Music - The University of Utah. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 19, 2017 ; accessed on September 19, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / music.utah.edu
  8. ↑ a b c Maurice Abravanel - French elegance, American carefree - Capriccio Kulturforum . In: Capriccio Kulturforum . ( capriccio-kulturforum.de [accessed on September 19, 2017]).
  9. ↑ a b c d Reinhold Brinkmann, Christoph Wolff: Driven Into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States . University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-520-21413-2 ( google.de [accessed September 19, 2017]).
  10. ↑ Maurice Abravanel - French elegance, American carefree - Capriccio Kulturforum . In: Capriccio Kulturforum . ( capriccio-kulturforum.de [accessed on September 19, 2017]).
  11. ↑ a b c Happy Birthday, Maurice Abravanel! In: Utah Symphony Orchestra (Ed.): THE MUSICIAN'S LOUNGE . January 6, 2011 ( utahsymphony.org [accessed September 19, 2017]).
  12. ↑ a b c d Alex D. Smith: The Symphony in America: Maurice Abravanel, and the Utah Symphony Orchestra: The Battle for Classical Music . Ed .: Brigham Young University. Provo 2002 (English, byu.edu [PDF]).
  13. ↑ a b c DEATH: MAURICE ABRAVANEL . In: DeseretNews.com . September 24, 1993 ( deseretnews.com [accessed September 19, 2017]).
  14. ↑ Cherie Willis: Maurice Abravanel. In: Utah History Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 19, 2017 (English).
  15. ↑ Hedwig Schacko at Operissimo  on the basis of the Great Singer LexiconTemplate: Operissimo / maintenance / use of parameter 2
  16. ^ League of American Orchestras. Retrieved September 19, 2017 (American English).
  17. ^ National Medal of Arts 1991 | NEA. Retrieved September 19, 2017 .
  18. ^ Abravanel Hall | Latest Concerts and Tickets. Retrieved September 19, 2017 (American English).
  19. ↑ Maurice Abravanel . In: GRAMMY.com . May 14, 2017 ( grammy.com [accessed September 19, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Abravanel, Maurice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abravanel, Maurice de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conductor
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Thessaloniki , Greece
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1993
Place of death Salt Lake City , Utah , United States