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After a lifetime of working professionally in the performing arts,
and heading his own firm for over a quarter of a century, Maxim Gershunoff
finds most pleasure in seeking out new young artists whose talents he
perceives as worthy of advancement. To that end he has recently added
a number of new artists. Relatively new to the roster are pianists:
Christian Leotta from Italy is perhaps the youngest artist to receive
his nation's highest recognition of artistic achievement, the President's
Medal, Javier Clavere from Argentina, the South African (Ms.)
Petronel Malan, and the American born Max Barros of Brazilian extraction.
Look for the youthful violinists Emil Chudnovsky from Israel by way
of Russia; Wolfgang David (formerly Sengstschmid) of Austria,
Irina Muresanu originally from Romania, and the Frenchman
Frédéric Pélassy . American pianist and prolific
composer James Adler reports excellent sales of his composition
"Memento Mori; An AIDS Requiem" - available on
Albany Records and also available through
Amazon.com, as is
Maxim Gershunoff's memoir
"It's Not All
Song and Dance."
Hailing from Argentina but now a naturalized American citizen, the aptly
named pianist Clavere continues to impress audiences and critics alike
and is joined, on occasion, by his wife Lindsay, an American, in
two-piano recitals. Barros recorded Brazilian composer Guarneri's piano
concertos with conductor Thomas Conlin recently for the Naxos label and
the disk has been accorded a great deal of critical acclaim. Leotta has
been performing worldwide now for more than 6 years and has won acclaim
in music capitals in Europe and North America performing all of Beethoven's
Sonatas. Petronel Malan, now a Texas resident, is acclaimed as a superb
interpreter of Mozart. Violinist David is also gaining an important
reputation throughout Europe and lately in the USA as well where
The Washington Post said he "scaled the heights of music making in a
performance spanning the 20th century." Violinist Muresanu is another
internationally acclaimed young artist who has been a consistent prize
winner in Europe and the USA. The Boston Globe has praised her as
"not just a virtuoso, but an artist." Vbiolinist Pélassy's recordings
so impressed Maxim Gershunoff that he was immediately signed to our roster.
For the past decade he has roamed the world as a French cultural
ambassador performing recitals in far flung exotic locales. Internationally
renowned cellist Erling Blondal Bengtsson enjoys repeat engagements here
in the USA, as well as pursuing multiple engagements in Europe annually.
The natural successor and protegé of operatic satirist Anna Russell,
Canadian soprano Mary Lou Fallis has repeated her sell-out engagements
of "Primadonna" (A comedic view of a diva's life) for several summers
running in Toronto. Robert M. Gewald Management in New York City
(1-800-652-8121) collaborates on the booking of this special attraction.
Conductor Jose Serebrier continues to expand upon one of the all-time
largest of discographies, now totaling well over 150 in all with over
30 Grammy nominations. His recording of works by composer Ned Rorem
received a total of five GRAMMY nominations in 2004 and a 2007 release
of works by Glazunov was also nominated. The 2002 GRAMMY for a contemporary
classical composition was awarded for conductor Thomas Conlin's recording
of George Crumb's "Star Child" with the Warsaw Philharmonic. Maestro
Maurice Peress in between multiple guest conducting engagements on
mainland China was able to complete his book "Dvorak to Duke Ellington"
and it is available from the publisher Oxford University Press and at all
discount outlets online. Peress is also a Grammy nominee for his
Musicmasters disc of Paul Whiteman's Historic Aeolian Hall Concert
of 1924 featuring the premiere of Gershwin's A Rhapsody in Blue.
Conductor James Brooks-Bruzzese in addition to maintaining one of the only
two symphonic organizations in South Florida, the Symphony of the Americas,
wends his way across three continents annually, as well as importing a
chamber orchestra to the United States each summer from Europe, then touring
it nationally and throughout Latin America. Conductor Anshel Brusilow
continues in his capacity as Music Director of the Richardson Symphony
Orchestra to provide suburban Dallas residents with some of the finest
music making in all of Texas.
REVIEW - BOOKS
Art agent provocateur
Fans of classical music and dance will find
Maxim Gershunoff's new memoir absorbing.
By Chris Pasles
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 18, 2005
The unsung, frequently maligned hero behind every successful
musician is an agent -- or, in the loftier language of the trade,
an artist's representative. Maxim Gershunoff is one such individual
with a greater claim than most on Angelenos' attention.
He collaborated with Stravinsky and Franz Waxman to create the Los
Angeles Music Festival at UCLA in the 1950s, helped James A.
Doolittle launch successful seasons at the Greek Theatre and worked
with Sol Hurok in bringing dance companies such as the Bolshoi, the
Kirov and the Moiseyev to the Southland during the Cold War.
His friends and clients included Bolshoi prima ballerina Maya
Plisetskaya and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. He also launched the
career of a cellist who was then 16, Yo-Yo Ma.
Now Gershunoff, 81, has written his memoirs, "It's Not All Song
and Dance," with Leon Van Dyke, and the book reveals not only a
lost golden age in the performing arts but also some artists with
feet of clay. (He'll be at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena this
evening and at Dutton's in Beverly Hills on Sunday afternoon to sign
books and take questions.)
The son of Russian emigre musicians who were brought to the U.S.
by Hurok in 1923, Gershunoff came to arts management indirectly. He
first studied trumpet at the Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia, where Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber were among
his classmates. He then played under Fritz Reiner and Arturo
Toscanini but grew increasingly bored by the repetitive aspects of
the job. So, with encouragement from conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos,
he went into arts management, ultimately serving for 12 years as
vice president of Hurok Concerts Inc. He remains active in the
field, representing, among others, soprano Marni Nixon and conductor
José Serebrier.
Doolittle, who died in 1997 at 83, may be a hero to Angelenos. But
not to Gershunoff. The impresario, he claims, finessed him and two
other founding associates, Eleanor Peters and William Westcott, out
of the Greek Theatre Assn. after its first successful summer season
in 1951.
"We were naive," Gershunoff said in a recent phone
interview from his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "The role
Jimmy played was 'Help me, help me, because I can't do it myself.'
We dove in, not thinking for ourselves."
Their efforts paid off, but later Peters, Westcott and he discovered
that Doolittle had omitted their names from the association's
founding charter, then manipulated them into resigning so he could
take all the credit.
"We didn't speak for 40 years," Gershunoff said.
Readers who followed the drama of Soviet-era Kirov dancers Valery
and Galina Panov struggling to emigrate to Israel will find
similarly disappointing news. The Soviets didn't jail Valery Panov
for being a freedom fighter, Gershunoff writes, but because he beat
up his wife's mother. Moreover, after emigrating to Israel, Panov
hated living there and worked to get out as quickly as possible.
"Panov was simply an opportunist, with no ethics
whatsoever," Gershunoff said.
There are also gossipy stories about Howard Hughes' fascination with
Ballets de Paris star Renée "Zizi" Jeanmaire and about
Robert F. Kennedy's and Warren Beatty's interest in Plisetskaya.
Though no one is likely to want a return to the days when the Soviet
agency that booked artists internationally took the bulk of
performers' earnings, Gershunoff said that, for a promoter, there's
a downside to the freedom that Russian artists enjoy today.
"It's less interesting to bring those huge, wonderful companies
now that the stars can come in and be a guest with some other
company," he said.
And the world has changed. Hurok's strategy was to invest his own
money and build careers patiently if he had to.
"He figured if he lost on something, he'd make it another time.
He brought the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo on the last boat that
left Europe before the war," he said.
Though American audiences were unfamiliar with the company,
Gershunoff said, Hurok "made it known little by little. He also
made the guitar be a classical instrument by booking recitals over
and over again."
Still, Hurok had far more venues available to him than promoters
have these days, when the demand for classical artists has fallen
off sharply at colleges and universities and the community concert
associations that brought culture at low cost to so many people have
almost vanished.
For those conditions, Gershunoff faults lack of music education and
insufficient government sponsorship of the arts.
"Other countries invest money in their artists," he said,
"and one sign of that sponsorship is the number of Finns on
podiums around the world and the winners in the recent Cliburn
competition, none of whom were Americans."
He also sees many of today's presenters as wrongheaded.
"They are basically unartistic marketing people. So they have
to go the safe road, engaging and reengaging the same artists,
blowing up their series with the image of somewhat faded names....
This is leading into a dead-end, one-way street."
If all this makes Gershunoff sound like a curmudgeon, he's not. He's
cultured, direct and amusing, and not worried about remarks about,
for instance, the Panovs that might seem libelous.
"That doesn't concern me at all," he said. "We have
an attorney who was more worried about the Kennedy family and Warren
Beatty. When we talked about being sued, he said, 'You should be so
lucky.' "
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