In 1947, officials of Radio City Music Hall in New York City made a generous offer to Maurice Abravanel, one of the most promising young men in the music world of the era: a job as musical director at $30,000 a year and the prospects of up to $200,000 within five years.
"Would this lead to the permanent conductorship of a symphony orchestra?" young Abravanel reportedly asked.No, but it did hold the promise of a salary better than a symphony conductor could expect, income from recordings, possibly work in Hollywood, America's entertainment capital, the interviewer said.
For Abravanel, the answer was clear. "Already I have been deflected from my course for too long. I cannot risk another detour. If I take this offer with its glitter, rush and lack of close contact with the audience and community, in six months I will need to engage a psychoanalyst. No."
A short time later, Abravanel visited Salt Lake City at the invitation of Ruth M. Cowan, manager of the struggling Utah Symphony, which was about to slip into historical limbo. With a party of symphony supporters, he drove into one of the city's east-side canyons. After a day communing with the majestic mountains and wide spaces of Utah, he had his answer. And that decision - to come to Utah as symphony conductor - made a huge difference to the state's musical legacy. He was chosen from 50 applicants to take over the beleaguered Utah Symphony, which had begun life as a Works Progress Administration effort.
For more than three decades as maestro, he was the musical soul of the Utah Symphony while also dealing with cogent realities - chronic financial struggles, the initial building period and the ups and downs of community support. When times were tough, he bypassed his own salary for months at a time and persuaded his musicians to stay the course until things got better. In time, the Utah group was being listed among the top 10 symphonies in the country.
While what he gave to Utah is a priceless legacy, he also took from the state something critical to his personal contentment - a spiritual home and a challenge equal to the music in his soul, biographers say.
Born Jan. 6, 1903, in Salonika, Greece, he was affected by the history of Jewish persecution in Europe. An ancestor several centuries earlier had been financial adviser to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and contributed to the financing of the initial voyage of Christopher Columbus. But in 1492, the same year that Columbus sailed to the New World, the Spanish Inquisition drove the Abravanel family from Spain. They sought haven in Genoa, Italy, for a time, then moved on to Salonika, which at that time belonged to Turkey.
When little Maurice was 6, the family emigrated to Lausanne, Switzerland, where his dark coloring and foreign accent assured his rejection by his peers. He showed an early talent for music, beginning lessons at 8. By 15, he was working in the municipal theater of Lausanne, arranging numbers and performing. His first experience in conducting was in the city's university.
Despite his obvious promise as a musician, his father tried to press Maurice into a career in medicine and sent him to Zurich to study in that field.
When the young man persisted in his desires for a career in music, his father withdrew financial support, temporarily bringing to pass his own prediction that music would be a profitless undertaking for his son.
Young Abravanel went to Germany because the Swiss franc went farther in that country and entered a difficult era of missed meals, cold living quarters and discouragement. He happened to be in an agency when an accompanist failed to show up for a vocalist's audition and he took over as a substitute. The job was brief, but he became known to the agency director. Through such contacts, he subsisted. He finally landed a well-paying job as a pianist in a restaurant, which included substantial meals as part of the pay package.
He got a break when the Mecklenburg-Strelitz Theater burned down and its four musical directors lost their jobs. He got all four jobs rolled into one, with the expectation that he would produce popular concerts without any "nonsense about rehearsals."
"I'll do it. If you don't need rehearsals, then I don't either," he said. He conducted 20 concerts without any prior rehearsal - valuable training, he later said, in learning how to convey his intentions to the orchestra in clear, unmistakable gestures.
His stature as a musician was growing. In the 1930s, he was a guest conductor in Germany, France, Italy and England. His first official debut as a professional conductor was with the Berlin State Opera. In 1936, he went to Australia and at the close of his contract was invited to join Sydney's Metropolitan Opera, where he remained for two years.
Ironically, he was both praised and criticized for the same reason: He produced new operas and wanted his stars to rehearse. Over the decades of his career, he got a reputation for introducing new music to American listeners - including such composers as Mahler and Bruckner. Utah Symphony recordings of their music catapulted these two to acclaim they had not known in this country. With the Utah Symphony, he was the first in America to record a Handel oratorio other than "The Messiah."
Leaving Australia for the United States, he found a new sense of freedom and creativity. He applied for citizenship as soon as possible. It seemed he had found the "home" that had eluded his family for 450 years, according to a biographical sketch by Levi E. Reynolds.
In New York, he collaborated with his old friend, Kurt Weill, who had believed in him during the skimpy days in Germany. When Weill came to America to produce Broadway musicals, he invited Abravanel to conduct several of the productions for him. But the collaboration ended after a time. Abravanel wanted to conduct a symphony and he was ready to move on - to Utah as the case was.
If Utah's adult music lovers found a friend in Abravanel, its youth had even greater reason to admire and appreciate him. He put special emphasis on performing for children and encouraging them in their musical ambitions. He believed no child was likely to go astray if he were trained in the elements of instrumental music. Such training, he claimed, provided the discipline and refinement that produced sensitive, responsible adults.
His wife sometimes became concerned at the amount of time he would devote to one child that he believed needed his help. "Sometimes he is as busy as a bee, and there is not time enough to go around. He will spend, sometimes, three hours with a youngster, and it makes me so upset and almost furious that I don't know what to do. I must wait until he is through," she told an interviewer.
The maestro's response to her concerns: "The boy needs help. What else can I do?"
In 1975, a biographer described the maestro as "charming, irascible, witty, grave, affable, sympathetic, demanding, suave and pungent, each with undistilled intensity." Whatever he was any moment, he was that, 100 percent.
Abravanel retired in 1979 as active leader of the Utah Symphony, but he retained the title of music director laureate. In the years since 1947, he had earned the respect and admiration of thousands of Utahns and others throughout the American music community. He had been honored with dozens of recognitions by music, civic and educational groups. Utah presented its Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1981, he was noted as recipient of the Gold Baton Award of the American Symphony Orchestra League. On that occasion, a speaker said he had touched every one of more than 1,200 orchestras in the United States. Abravanel had brought music down from the ivory tower into the reach of everyone, the speaker said.
Abravanel served the national cause of music through the American Arts Alliance board of directors and as a member of the National Council on the Arts for six years.
Retirement simply meant a change of focus. In 1982, he was named acting artistic director of the noted Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. He remained an influence on American music until his death on May 27, 1993.
Where his talents and abilities might have taken him if he had not opted for Utah's little-known infant orchestra in 1947 is impossible to say. But from his own perspective, it was a good choice. "After traveling this world as much as I have, and after living under so many different conditions," he said, "it is only natural to place a value - a monetary, paycheck value - on the air you breathe, and water you drink, your surroundings and the friends you have around you. It is worth much to me to live in Salt Lake City."