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Life Arts & Culture the helm of a part-time community orchestra Photo: Dana Sohm, Courtesy S.L. Convention & Visitors Bureau
and remade into a respected professional orchestra with several prestigious recording contracts and an impressive list of firsts.
For all but one of his 32 years with the Utah
Symphony the performances took place mainly in the acoustically-splendid, but monstrouslyoversized and austere Mormon Tabernacle. So Abravanel acquired another skillset, fundraising and lobbying for a modern concert hall. An ingratiating and charming man he conducted his last season in the beautiful Symphony Hall, since renamed Abravanel Hall in his honor.
The Utah Arts Festival is Utah’s largest arts bash
done everything a talented young conductor
could do. Or so he must of thought.
Utah Symphony was the first to record all nine
of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler whose repu
He learned at the feet of the great Swiss
Under the baton of Maestro Abravanel, the
conductor Ernest Ansermet, dined with Igor
tation as a finest post-Romantic composer was
Stravinsky, was a student of Kurt Weill of Mack
advanced in no small measure by Abravanel and
the Knife fame, guest conducted at the Berlin
the Symphony. Abravanel and the Utah Symphony
State Opera and the Paris Opera, worked with
also made early and influential recordings of the
Bruno Walter, developed an expertise with
Berlioz Requiem and works of Vaughn Williams.
festivals and
Gustav Mahler’s works, and like Willam
His life’s work also brought numerous awards,
celebrations.
Christensen, partnered with celebrated Russian
including the National Medal of Arts in 1991.
choreographer George Balanchine.
Festival. The year is 1961 and a drama
Utah is the home to many
20
When Nazi Germany began to prove inimical
Fred Adams, founder, Utah Shakespearean
to the young Abravanel in the early 1930s,
professor at the College of Southern Utah (now
Maurice and his wife left for Paris and later
Southern Utah University) determined to bring
Australia where he guest-conducted a season
Hamlet to the tiny hamlet of Cedar City. It
each at the Sydney Opera and Melbourne Opera.
wasn’t so crazy as it sounds. Even in the early
He then made his way to New York where he
1960s tens of thousands of tourists made their
spent time conducting Weill’s work on
way through Cedar City to the areas’ many
Broadway and spent another three years under
natural wonders… six National Parks are within
contract with the New York Metropolitan
a few hours’ drive of Cedar City. The locals grew
Opera. But when this vagabond landed in Salt
up taking their milk with locally-produced
Lake City in 1947, he came to stay. He took
dramas, oratorios, comedies and operettas.