The Hurok Legacy

An impresario, the late Sol Hurok used to say, "is a man who discovers talent, who promotes it, who presents it, and who puts up the money and takes the risk." In Hurok's case, the impresario was also a man who changed and enriched the taste of a people and persuaded nations to become cultural friends. For more than 50 years he brought to the U.S. the performing geniuses of his native Russia: Pavlova, Chaliapin, Oistrakh, Ulanova. His proudest accomplishment? "Bringing ballet to America and the American public to ballet."

Although he was in effect a one-man operation, Hurok liked to underplay his own indispensability. "A lot of people are mistaken when they say that if Hurok disappears his organization will fall apart," he would say. "It'll go on, as long as they have the artists." Last week --two years after Hurok died at the age of 85--the current management of Hurok Concerts conceded that almost three dozen of its biggest box office draws had quit. The stampede out of Hurok began one of the biggest shake-ups in the concert business. Items:

> In a major reorganization announced last week, Hurok Concerts worked out a deal with a smaller, rival manager, Harold Shaw, 53, and gave him most of its artistic leadership. Shaw will continue to run his own company, Shaw Concerts, which handles such artists as Guitarist Julian Bream, Contralto Maureen Forrester and Pianist Vladimir Horowitz. A merger may be possible in the future, but for now the move is comparable to Ford turning operations over to American Motors.

> Sheldon Gold, 46, who was with Hurok for 15 years, emerged as a powerful force in the management field. Last May, shortly after he was fired as Hurok's president, Gold announced the formation of his own firm, ICM Artists Ltd. Since then, the agency has signed up such onetime Hurok clients as Violinists Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman; Pianists Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Gina Bachauer and Daniel Barenboim; Cellist Leonard Rose; Conductors Erich Leinsdorf and Julius Rudel; and Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. Zukerman switched, he explained, because "Shelly Gold is more than a manager to me. He's a close friend. I get a lot from Shelly, a lot more than the 20%." Added Stern: "I don't want to say anything bad about the new people [at Hurok]. But they are not very experienced. I don't have time for kindergarten." One of the co-owners of Hurok, President Maynard Goldman, 38, takes a philosophic stance: "Historically, artists are going to leave managements and go to others." Nonetheless, Goldman and his partner, Paul Del Rossi, 33, are suing Gold and ICMA for $4 million --$1 million for loss of commissions and $3 million in punitive damages.

> Perhaps the most important outcome of the turmoil at Hurok may be that the U.S. will be seeing less of what was once the impresario's greatest pride: the famous international dance, symphonic and opera troupes that were his most publicized promotion ventures. Currently Hurok Concerts is presenting an 18-week season at the Met. This week the National Ballet of Canada comes in. In September the Paris Opera arrives.

Goldman and Del Rossi say that in the future they will no longer be able to afford the overhead such ventures require. "Mr. Hurok's theory--and I never met him--was that it was of vital importance for him to be at the Met," says Goldman. "He didn't want anyone else in that house." Hurok would book the Met for three months or so in the spring and summer, and pick up some or all expenses of visiting companies. "You run millions of dollars through all that and you come out with nothing on the bottom line," says Goldman. Sometimes even less. Last year Hurok's loss on the widely acclaimed visit of the Bolshoi Opera was about $400,000. Hurok would still like to bring over the Bolshoi and Stuttgart ballets, but only if it can renegotiate more favorable contracts.

> The Metropolitan Opera, headed for a staggering $10 million operating loss next season, has yet another huge financial problem on its hands. Deprived of the Hurok guarantee (worth $70,000 a week), it must now find other tenants. Talks are under way with several companies (notably Britain's Royal Ballet) in an effort to solve the problem and avert deeper financial trouble.

Sol Hurok's reputation was based on a memorable blend of taste and guts, but his legacy also included a share of confusion. Had he named a successor, it might have been different. Harold Shaw, the new man at Hurok Concerts, is regarded as a sound businessman. His abilities as a starmaker in the Hurok tradition are less well known. Despite the recent depletion of its talent roster, Hurok Concerts still handles a respectable array of artists, including Van Cliburn, Sviatoslav Richter, Henryk Szeryng, Nathan Milstein, Janet Baker, Nicolai Gedda and Artur Rubinstein. One of the joys of the new Shaw-Hurok liaison, said Shaw last week, is that now Guitarist Bream and Mezzo Baker can give joint recitals in the U.S., as they have in England. One of the things wrong with the business--most music managers being as single-minded as Charlie Finley--is that Bream and Baker could not do that before.

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