UK conductor dies, 93
RIPMichael Graubart, who came to England as an eight year-old refugee from Nazi Vienna, has died after a long life of service to music and education.
After first studying physics and working as an engineer for EMI, Graubart gravitated to music, studying composition with Mátyás Seiber, flute with Geoffrey Gilbert and conducting with Lawrence Leonard.
He was Head of Music at Morley College in London from 1966 to 1991 and formed a contemporary music ensemble at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Among other premieres he gave the first UK performance of Viktor Ullmann’s Theresienstadt opera The Emperor of Atlantis.
Der Kaiser von Atlantis is a great work, like Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, it’s a parody you have thank the Nazis for in some perverse way. (The Final Solution aside, obviously.)