Abravanel!

Bravos to Lowell Durham and the University of Utah Press for bringing us Abravanel! The presentation is a class act from cover to cover. The silver letters on dressy black of the cover suggest the ambiance of the concert hall. Fascinating photographs grace nearly every page, adding a "you are there" dimension to the congenial prose. The production is coffee-table quality at a paperback price. Above all, it is the story that matters. One might think conducting some of the world's greatest orchestras of the world by age 33 would satisfy the ambition of any musician, but not Maurice Abravanel. He was not satisfied to reap where others had sown. Following in the footsteps of Brigham Young just 100 years earlier, Abravanel entered Salt Lake valley in 1947 to see if he was capable of building an orchestra which could do justice to the masterworks of the European orchestral tradition in the great western desert. Durham's Abravanel! is the story of his success.