Maurice Abravanel always claimed he came to Utah "for selfish reasons. I came to Salt Lake City to prove to myself that I could build an orchestra, not just maintain one."
Deep down, the boy who was teased by Swiss children because of his Turkish/Greek origins, the student who was supposed to study medicine but was drawn to music instead, the musician who came to America to conduct the Metropolitan Opera orchestra but ended up on Broadway, was also looking for a home.
He found it in a place where he shared neither ethnic origin nor religion with most of the citizens, but where he found a common passion for music, for arts, for excellence.
From 1947 to his retirement in 1979, Abravanel served as music director for the Utah Symphony, shaping it into one of the leading orchestras in the country. Donald Thulean, of the American Symphony Orchestra League, said in 1993 that the Utah Symphony is "the epitome of the American orchestral tradition. . . . It could not exist anywhere else in the world. And it would not exist but for the artistic vision, the energy, the humanity and the persuasive power of its conductor laureate."
Abravanel was born Jan. 6, 1903, in Salonika, then part of Turkey but later part of Greece. His parents were of Spanish-Portuguese-Jewish origin (an ancestor had served as chancellor to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella before leaving Spain at the time of the Inquisition).
When young Maurice was 6, the family moved to Switzerland, where his father worked as a pharmacist. He started piano lessons at age 9. His father hoped Maurice would pursue a career in medicine, but, as Abravanel told Stereo Review magazine, "I remember once riding on the back seat of a motorcycle all the way to Geneva — in the dead of winter — to hear 'Lohengrin.' I knew then that music was my life. . . . I had to be a musician or nothing."
Abravanel went to Berlin to study, and there hooked up with Kurt Weill, who became teacher and mentor. Abravanel went on to Paris to conduct for Ballet Ballenchine, then to the Paris Opera, to Australia as head of the Sydney Orchestral Society, and in 1936 to New York.
In America, he again met up with Weill, who had begun to compose Broadway musicals. Abravanel, by then an American citizen, became music director for most of them.
The post-war years were an exciting time to be in New York — almost too exciting. "You could only remember how great something was for 24 hours — until the next great concert erased its memory," he said. "I decided I wanted to settle down with an orchestra of my own somewhere away from all that."
He turned down an offer from the Radio City Music Hall and came to Salt Lake City, where the mountains reminded him of Switzerland. But he found his life's work with the Utah Symphony, which he conducted for 32 years. He led the symphony on four international tours and made some 130 recordings, including the first American recordings of all the Mahler symphonies.
After his retirement, Abravanel continued to work as an artist-in-residence at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in Lennox, Mass. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.
Abravanel died on Sept. 28, 1993, at age 90.