Sol Hurok

Sol Hurok (Solomon Isaievich Hurok; born Solomon Izrailevich Gurkov, Russian Соломон Израилевич Гурков; April 9, 1888 – March 5, 1974) was a 20th-century American impresario.

Hurok was born in Pogar, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-day Bryansk Oblast, Russia) in 1888, and moved to the United States in 1906, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1914.

During Hurok's long career, S. Hurok Presents managed many performing artists, including Katherine Dunham, Marian Anderson, Irina Arkhipova, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Feodor Chaliapin, Van Cliburn, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine, Margot Fonteyn, Emil Gilels, Horacio Gutiérrez, Daniel Heifetz, Jerome Hines, Isa Kremer, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, David Oistrakh, Anna Pavlova, Jan Peerce, Andrés Segovia, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Galina Vishnevskaya, Efrem Zimbalist, and many others.

In 1935, Rubinstein introduced Hurok to singer Marian Anderson, who retained Hurok as her manager for the rest of her career. A few years later, with Walter White of the NAACP and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Hurok was instrumental in persuading U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange Anderson's Easter Sunday open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939.

Beginning in the late 1930s Hurok managed Colonel W. de Basil's Original Ballet Russe, as well as its offshoot rival company, Sergei J. Denham's The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Original Ballet Russe often performed near each other, for instance in London and New York City. Hurok hoped to reunite the companies, but ultimately was unsuccessful.

In 1959, after 35 years of effort, Sol Hurok brought Russia's Bolshoi Ballet to the United States for an eight-week performance tour. In 1961, he brought Russia's Kirov Academy of Ballet and the Igor Moiseyev Ballet Company to the U.S. In 1962, he again brought the Bolshoi to the U.S. for a tour at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The First Moog Quartet, the first to perform electronic music in Carnegie Hall, was formed in 1970 in response to Hurok's request to hear the Moog synthesizer in a live concert.

In honor of Hurok's influence on American music, on December 4, 1971, he was awarded the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit. Beginning in 1964, this award was "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year that has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression."

In 1972, a bomb planted in Hurok's Manhattan office exploded, killing Iris Kones and injuring several others, including Hurok. While many people believe the bombing had been arranged by the Jewish Defense League, a far-right terrorist organization which opposed the U.S. tours of artists from the Soviet Union, no one was ever convicted of the crime.

In 1974, en route to a meeting with David Rockefeller to discuss a Rudolf Nureyev project, Hurok died of a heart attack. More than two thousand people nearly filled Carnegie Hall for his funeral, where Marian Anderson delivered the final eulogy.

"He didn't have the musical understanding of a scholar or specialist," Russian pianist Alexander Slobodyanik, another Hurok discovery, told me. "But he had a sixth sense for the aura surrounding an artist, the aura of success or the ability to interest an audience. And after all, most people in a concert audience don't have any special education either. Like Hurok, they just have hearts."

— Harlow Robinson, "Sol Hurok: America's dance impresario."        

• Anna Pavlova, film by Emil Loteanu; portrayed by John Murray (1983).