Former conductor, UCLA faculty member dies at 79
By Shaun Bishop
April 11, 2005 9:00 p.m.
Samuel Krachmalnick, a former conductor and faculty member at
UCLA, is remembered by his friends and family as having a deep love
of music and a powerful command of an orchestra.
“He used to have a wonderful saying, “˜Don’t go
around in a world of 150-watt bulbs and just be 50,'”
said Gloria Lane, a soprano opera singer and his wife of 50 years.
“He did love teaching and he did love the orchestra. … And
I think he loved music more than anything.”
Krachmalnick, who lived in Los Angeles, died April 1 of a heart
attack at the age of 79. He was a part of the UCLA music department
faculty from 1976 until 1991 when he retired, and leaves behind
fond memories of his prowess as a conductor for those who knew
him.
A native of St. Louis, Krachmalnick studied at the Eastman
School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and The Julliard School in New
York City.
He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1957 for his direction of
Leonard Bernstein’s Broadway musical production of the French
novel “Candide.”
He worked as director of the American Ballet Theater, the Boston
Arts Festival and the Metropolitan Opera National Company through
the years before John Hall, now a senior lecturer in musical
theater at UCLA, suggested his college friend Krachmalnick for an
open conductor position at the university. Krachmalnick got the
job.
Hall, who worked as stage director for Krachmalnick’s
operas, recalled a performance of “Madame Butterfly” in
which an actor completely missed his entrance and the conductor had
to improvise.
“Sam realized that there was a foul-up,” but he
stayed composed and gave them instructions to go back to the
entrance song for the actor, Hall said.
“He got the entire orchestra just to jump back 64
bars,” Hall said whimsically. “He had that kind of
power on the stand.”
His wife said his talent as a teacher allowed him to get the
most out of his students, and earned him high marks on his teaching
evaluations.
“He had a knack for taking complicated things in music and
making them simple, which I think is the most wonderful thing. He
was a wonderful teacher,” she said, adding
Krachmalnick’s brother was also an accomplished conductor and
musician.
That affinity for teaching extended beyond his UCLA years. Lane
said other conductors working professionally from the late Jerry
Goldsmith to Johnny Mandel, came to study with him after he was
retired “because he had this wonderful facility to make it
easy.”
Hall said Krachmalnick expected professional-quality work after
coming from that environment, which could occasionally hurt
students’ feelings.
“But yet they always played better under Sam than they
played under anyone else. And I loved that,” he said.
Asked in 1978 about his switch from professional conducting to
academia, Krachmalnick said he enjoyed teaching.
“It’s a joy to watch the students grow,”
Krachmalnick told the Los Angeles Times. “They’re like
plants you tend and water and worry over. So some of them
don’t bloom; so some of them do. The percentages are pretty
much the same as in the outside world.”
Hall speaks fondly of the conductor as a performer, a teacher
and a friend.
“He was the crankiest, meanest old son of a bitch I ever
met ““ until he was in the pit,” Hall said.
“The elegant music that came out of him,” Hall
paused. “It was an education for me.”
Krachmalnick is survived by his wife and two children.
With reports from Bruin wire services.
