Max Goberman

Max Goberman (1911 – 31 December 1962) was an American conductor. He conducted ballets, Broadway musicals (including the original productions of Leonard Bernstein's On the Town and West Side Story), and the classical repertoire. He was working on the first recording of the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn, but died while slightly less than halfway through the project.

Max Goberman was born in 1911 in Philadelphia. He studied violin with Leopold Auer, and conducting with Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute of Music. He was a violinist with the Philadelphia Orchestra before Reiner's recommendation gained him his first conducting appointment. He was Assistant Conductor for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo's 1939 Australian tour. That year he conducted Aaron Copland's music for the documentary The City, with the narrator Morris Carnovsky.

In 1941 his first Broadway job was as Musical Director for three ballets at the Majestic Theater, including Three Virgins and a Devil by Agnes de Mille. It was Goberman who suggested that de Mille approach Morton Gould to be her collaborator in Fall River Legend – a suggestion she nearly rejected because she knew of Gould only through his radio broadcasts.

In 1945 he conducted the film score of Histadrut, an American/Palestinian co-production. He orchestrated The Beggar's Opera and conducted it on Broadway.

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