Maurice Abravanel
From Orchestra Conductors
(b Thessaloniki, 6 Jan 1903; d Salt Lake City, 22 Sept 1993).
American conductor of Spanish-Portuguese descent. He was taken to Switzerland at the age of six and studied medicine at the University of Lausanne before, on Busoni’s recommendation, he moved to Berlin in 1922 to study with Weill. He conducted in provincial German theatres and finally in Berlin until 1933, when he moved to Paris to conduct the Balanchine ballet company and the première of Weill’s ballet Die sieben Todsünden. The following year he toured Australia with the British National Opera Company. On the recommendation of Walter and Furtwängler, he was hired by the Metropolitan Opera, making his début with Samson et Dalila in 1936.
In an era of specialization, the mainly negative reviews for his mixed repertory of French opera and Wagner forced him out in 1938. He turned to Broadway, where he renewed his association with Weill, conducting the premières in New York of Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Lady in the Dark (1941), One Touch of Venus (1943), The Firebrand of Florence (1945) and Street Scene (1947). He also spent a season with the Chicago Opera Company (1940-41) and conducted the première of Blitzstein’s Regina in 1949, for which he won a Tony Award.
In 1947 Abravanel was appointed music director of the newly reorganized Utah SO, and by his retirement in 1979 had transformed this unknown community orchestra into a leading US ensemble. He made more than 100 recordings in Utah, including major works by Gould, Rorem and Schuman, and the first Mahler symphony cycle recorded by a single orchestra. He led the campaign for construction of a 2812-seat symphony hall in Salt Lake City, renamed Abravanel Hall in 1993, but was never to conduct there. He also created touring, educational and outreach programmes which were a model in their time. From 1954 to 1980 he served as music director of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, from 1981 taught conducting at Tanglewood, and in the same year was awarded the Golden Baton by the American Symphony Orchestra League.
