An oral history interview with Maurice Abravanel / conducted for the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music by Donald Spoto and Lys Symonette, New York, NY?, 1985? : recording and transcript.

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An oral history interview with Maurice Abravanel / conducted for the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music by Donald Spoto and Lys Symonette, New York, NY?, 1985? : recording and transcript.

Abravanel talks briefly about his relations with Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill, briefly discussing Lenya's recording of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny and Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of Die Dreigroschenoper. HE goes on to talk about twentieth-century music more generally, focusing on Strauss, Mahler, and Les Six, with some reference to Weill's opinion of them, and conlcudes the interview talking of his own recordings of Mahler, Stravinsky, and Bloch.

1 transcript (14 p.) ; 28 cm.1 sound cassettes (ca. 40 min.) : analog, 1 5/16 ips., stereo.

Related Entities

There are 7 Entities related to this resource.

Mahler, Gustav, 1860-1911

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65r5nvx (person)

Gustav Mahler was a Romantic composer. Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. For much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are generally designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. ...

Strauss, Richard, 1864-1949

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Spoto, Donald, 1941-....

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68917cm (person)

Spoto was born June 28, 1941 in New Rochelle, NY; BA, Iona College, 1963; MA (1966) and Ph. D. (1970), Fordham Univ.; taught at New School for Social Research, NYC, 1975-86; began teaching at Univ. of So. California in 1987; visiting lecturer, British Film Institute, National Film Theatre, London, 1980-86; published biographical studies of filmmakers Stanley Kramer, Alfred Hitchcock, Preston Sturges, playwright Tennessee Williams, and actors Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Lotte Lenya, Laurenc...

Symonette, Lys

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67m096m (person)

Blitzstein, Marc

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6x068pr (person)

Marc Blitzstein was an American composer of theater works and oratorios. Shortly before his death in 1964, the Ford Foundation commissioned him to write an opera on the subject of Sacco and Vanzetti for production by the Metropolitan Opera, but the work was not finished. From the guide to the Letters received, 1960-1963, (The New York Public Library. Music Division.) ...

Abravanel, Maurice, 1903-1993.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6gm887v (person)

Conductor of the Utah Symphony. From the description of Interviews, 1981. (Utah Historical Society). WorldCat record id: 122415000 Conductor. Abravanel (1903-1993) was born in Greece and grew up in Switzerland. He became a music theory student of Kurt Weill in 1922 in Berlin, and studied with him for a year. He and Weill remained good friends. When Abravanel became a conductor, Weill preferred him as a conductor of his own works; Abravanel conducted the premiere of Die siebe...

Weill, Kurt

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rr1x51 (person)

As a result of the success of his Broadway musical Lady in the dark in 1941, German-born composer Kurt Weill and his wife, the singing actress Lotte Lenya, were able to buy "Brook House," in Rockland County, New York, moving there during their sixth year in the United States. From Brook House, and a couple of addresses in Los Angeles during his trips there, Weill kept in touch, until a month before his death, with his parents, who had emigrated to Israel in 1935. From the description...