A dark day in American history, all the more dark for being so expected, and of course, we're in the middle of a long series of them. The one bright spot was, of course, the rather unexpected move of the Senator from Utah.
Romney made me think of Utah's great 'founding musician': Maurice Abravanel, a conductor that almost literally built an oasis in the desert by leading the Utah Symphony for 32 years - often without pay because the orchestra's money was stretched so thin.
Abravanel was everything a musical leader should be. Not just an amazingly perceptive musician whose recordings never get enough credit (and I mean it, he's seriously one of the top 25 or 30 conductors of all time) but who stands by his organization through all the bad times as well as the good.
Once upon a time, he was the youngest conductor in Met Opera history, who led seven performances of five different operas in nine days (Many music directors at the biggest opera houses conduct as few as two operas a year now). As Kurt Weill's favorite conductor, he was also extremely active on Broadway and turned down an incredibly lucrative offer to be the chief conductor of Radio City Music Hall so that he could take a one-year offer to lead the Utah Symphony in Salt Lake City, a rag-tag group who would never amount to anything without leadership that was absolutely transformative. He secured a recording contract for the orchestra with the Westminster label and recorded nearly the entire standard repertoire, including the first ever complete Mahler cycle (he even beat Bernstein...), and for audiences of conservative Mormons, he performed so much of the most difficult modern music.
Abravanel deserves so much more attention than he gets. Next time the classical cognoscenti among you are tempted to put something on by Karajan or Maazel, listen to Abravanel instead.
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