S. Krachmalnick, 79; Prominent Stage Conductor Taught at UCLA - Los Angeles Times
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S. Krachmalnick, 79; Prominent Stage Conductor Taught at UCLA

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Times Staff Writer

Samuel Krachmalnick, a veteran Tony-nominated Broadway conductor who concluded his career as director of the UCLA Symphony and campus opera productions, has died. He was 79.

Krachmalnick died of a heart attack April 1 in Burbank, his family said. He lived in Studio City.

After five years at the University of Washington in Seattle, Krachmalnick joined the UCLA music faculty in 1976 and helped shift its emphasis from training music teachers to developing performers.

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He directed concerts, operas and other musical productions of the UCLA Symphony and Opera Workshop until his retirement in 1991.

“It’s a joy to watch the students grow,” Krachmalnick told The Times in 1978, explaining why he switched to academe from the lofty circles of Broadway, the American Ballet Theater and the New York City Opera. “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.”

In 1989, when Krachmalnick opened UCLA’s 10-day Festival of American Music with the 1930s “Four Saints in Three Acts,” Times reviewer Daniel Cariaga praised his “solid, textually pointed and tightly paced conducting [as an] irresistible” element of this reconstruction.... “

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Krachmalnick also led student groups in productions of such musical revivals as “Leave It to Jane” and “The Boys from Syracuse.”

A native of St. Louis, Krachmalnick gave his first piano recital at age 8. He studied piano, French horn and music theory at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and conducting at Juilliard in New York City.

In 1954, he won the inaugural Koussevitzky Memorial Prize in conducting at Tanglewood, where he studied with Leonard Bernstein. Three years later, he would earn his Tony nomination as musical director of Bernstein’s Broadway musical production of the French classic “Candide.”

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Krachmalnick first worked on Broadway as associate musical director and conductor of Gian Carlo Menotti’s “The Saint of Bleecker Street” in 1954, in which his future wife, soprano Gloria Lane, sang the role of Desideria.

He went on to serve as musical director and conductor for the productions “Reuben, Reuben” and “Happy Town.”

Working with ballet and opera orchestras, he had stints as musical director of the American Ballet Theatre, the Boston Arts Festival, the Harkness Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera National Company. He also was on the conducting staff of the New York City Opera.

In addition to serving as guest conductor throughout Europe and the United States, he did extensive work in television. He was musical director for such programs as “Omnibus” and the PBS opera production of “Markheim.”

Krachmalnick, who prided himself on conducting the cast recording of “Candide,” ended his UCLA tenure with an acclaimed performance of that signature score.

He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Gloria, and two children, Magda and Robert.

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