The Last Impresario: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Sol Hurok by Harlow Robinson

After meeting Harlow and his husband last summer and becoming friends, I’ve been enjoying reading his books. I read his biography of Sergei Prokofiev first, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and then Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians, his 2007 book telling the stories of Russian immigrants working in the American film industry and the stories Hollywood tells about Russia. This book, from 1994 is a biography of Sol Hurok, a classical music promoter of the mid-20th century. To fill out my Russian immersion I’ve also been reading Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov, plus a disappointing biography of Tchaikovsky (not by Harlow Robinson).

Sol Hurok is another Russian, born in the tiny village of Pogar, near where the present-day borders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine come together. It was interesting to read this biography just at the time Russia is invading Ukraine across those borders. I wonder what has become of Hurok’s little village? When Hurok was born, some time in the 1880s, the village was part of the Russian empire.

The uncertainty of Hurok’s birthdate illustrates a persistent challenge for Hurok’s biographer. Hurok lived his life among show people. The drama and excitement of show business attracted him. The exaggerated claims splashed across theater posters and breathless puffery of press releases were his adopted language (spoken more fluently than the English language which Robinson reports Hurok never completely mastered). For Hurok, the world was a stage where he and his clients spun their artifice and illusion. Between truth and fiction, or a little of both, Hurok would always prefer whichever made the better story.

Robinson’s sources from Hurok himself, then, are all suspect and often contradictory. Hurok wrote a memoir, titled Impresario in 1946 (Ruth Goode, the wife of Hurok’s public relations man is credited as a “collaborator”). He wrote a second memoir, titled S. Hurok Presents, in 1953 (ghost-written without credit by another man in Hurok’s PR team). And Hurok participated in the filming of a Hollywood movie of his life titled Tonight We Sing released in 1953. (Hurok is credited as Technical Advisor. Anne Bancroft plays his second wife in one of her first film roles.)

Robinson interviewed dozens of artists and others who knew or worked with Hurok. He also interviewed Hurok’s daughter, Ruth, who encouraged Robinson to write the biography after an article Robinson had written about Hurok appeared in Performing Arts magazine in 1987 to accompany a tour of the Bolshoi ballet. Robinson lists dozens of other sources in his bibliography. These sources often remember incidents differently than Hurok does himself. Thus, throughout the book Robinson follows a conscientious pattern of giving Hurok’s version of an event, then Hurok’s alternate version of the same event, then a third version from someone else involved. Part of the length of Robinson’s book (470 pp.) can be attributed to having to write Hurok’s already long life (90 years approximately) essentially in triplicate.

Hurok came to the U.S. as a teenager in 1906. His first wife, Tamara, probably came with him. They settled in Brooklyn. Hurok got involved in local union and political causes. He became useful arranging artistic acts to perform at fundraisers. He loved the classical music he was exposed to in New York, in an unsophisticated, unschooled manner, and built his career on the vision of bringing classical performances to the same kind of working-class audiences who first heard Hurok’s presentations in union halls. His first concert productions were billed as Music for the Masses.

In 1916, he turned to concert promoting full-time and opened his own professional office. Over the next decades, he found great artists to represent: opera singers, ballet dancers, pianists, and violinists. His name is associated with the Russian opera singer Chiliapin, the ballerina Anna Pavlova, Isadora Duncan, Arthur Rubenstein. The list is long. In later years he represents Marian Andersen, Isaac Stern, Nureyev, Van Cliburn. He represented the Ballet Russes in the company’s many post-Diaghilev incarnations, as well as other ballet companies, taking them on tours to audiences throughout the U.S. He preferred stars to ensembles and the ever-popular repertoire to the experimental.

At some point (ambiguous, as are all Hurok’s biographical details) he divorced his first wife and married another woman, a twice-married singer named Emma. He adored her, though she seems a hard woman to like; perhaps her diva-like attitude is what attracted Hurok. Robinson tracks Hurok’s business fortunes: mostly up but occasionally down, including one probably apocryphal story of spending a night in Central Park. His independent agency was bought out by NBC, but in a spectacularly good deal for Hurok he was able to continue to operate under his independent label with NBC paying most of his office rent and expenses, and letting Hurok take advantage of the corporation’s connections.

Hurok’s success comes from obsessive work, and love of his work, and good luck and good timing. Conservative in his artistic taste, he was daring in his business schemes, booking large theaters boldly, and spending generously on projects he believed in or which brought him personal pleasure. He seems to have treated his favorite artists better than his own agency staff, however.

Hurok was also able to use his special position as a Russian native to create profitable connections with Russia and Russian artists. As in Robinson’s other books, about Prokofiev and Hollywood’s relationship with Russia, the 20th century political history of Russia’s on-again/off-again relations with the West become an integral part of Hurok’s story. At times, Hurok’s ability to promote Russian culture in the west is prized by Russia, and American audiences are eager to experience what he presents and support our sometimes ally. At other times Russia closes its borders, or frustrates Hurok’s plans with snarls of bureaucracy, or Russian acts lose their appeal in the west. During the U.S. red scare, Hurok’s Russian connections are viewed suspiciously by elements of the U.S. government. Later, when Russian artists begin defecting to the West, the Russian government becomes hesitant to make their talent available to Hurok. Hurok’s longstanding effort to present the Bolshoi ballet is a thread that runs through much of his career, finally successful in 1959. There’s a remarkable story toward the end of the book when Hurok’s New York office gets fire-bombed by radicals with the Jewish Defense League upset by Hurok’s promotion of Russian interests while Russia is persecuting Jews. A secretary in Hurok’s office died of asphyxiation during the 1972 incident.

Hurok was a fascinating man but this is essentially the biography of a businessman whose interest, for me, is a borrowed interest received from the creative acts he represented and the artistic world surrounding him. I kept wanting to look past Hurok to hear more of the artists’ stories. I suppose it is the challenge of any biographer to decide what of a life to include and what to leave out. Include too much and the book becomes obsessive and ponderous. Leave out too much and some other biographer will come along after with a boasting claim to having the complete story. Those editing decisions must be difficult to make.

As with his other books, I was again impressed with Robinson’s research and attention to detail, but the slippery nature of his subject this time must have been a frustration for him and it was for me, too. Rather than three possible versions for every story I longed for the facts. The contrast between what Robinson can know for sure, like the ticket prices for a concert at the Hippodrome in 1916, and what is impossible to know, like Hurok’s actual birthdate or the day of his marriage, creates a strange image where the background is in focus but the subject a bit of a blur.

Robinson is an excellent writer. He knows his subject as well as anyone can. He also thoroughly knows the context of 20th century Russian politics and culture, and classical music and musicians. I can’t imagine a better or more entertaining guide through Hurok’s life.