Igor Buketoff

Igor Konstantin Buketoff (29 May 19157 September 2001) was an American conductor, arranger and teacher. He had a special affinity with Russian classical music and with Sergei Rachmaninoff in particular. He also strongly promoted British contemporary music, and new music in general.

Biography Buketoff was born in Hartford, Connecticut on 29 May 1915, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest. He liked to refer to himself as "the last active conductor with pre-Revolutionary blood in his veins". His father knew Sergei Rachmaninoff and had been asked by the composer to assemble the choir for the 1927 world premiere of his Three Russian Folk Songs, Op. 41, using the basso profundos among the Orthodox clergy. Igor attended the rehearsals for the premiere and was told by his father that the conductor, Leopold Stokowski, had his own ideas about the tempo for the final song and refused to obey Rachmaninoff's wishes. He directed the choral departments at Juilliard and Adelphi College. The organization is now called the International Contemporary Music Exchange and is managed by the International Rostrum of Composers. He won the Ditson Award again in 1967. With that organisation he also led the U.S. premieres of Carl Nielsen's Maskarade and Werner Egk's Betrothal in San Domingo. Igor Buketoff orchestrated Act I of Rachmaninoff's unfinished opera Monna Vanna, which was premiered in a concert performance at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 11 August 1984, with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Rachmaninoff had written this act in piano score, as well as some uncompleted sketches for Act II. The soloists were Sherrill Milnes and Tatiana Troyanos.

He also prepared a version of Delius's opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, with reduced orchestration.

The Los Angeles Conservatory awarded him an Honorary Doctorate. Sir Arnold Bax's Overture to a Picaresque Comedy (first recording) Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's Symphony No. 1 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) Alexandre Guilmant's Symphony No. 1 for Organ and Orchestra in D minor, with the Butler University Symphony Orchestra (1977, live recording; a revival of a work that had not been played since the 1930s) works by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra (all world premiere recordings except the Grande Tarantelle) Escenas Campestres (Cuban Country Scenes), one-act opera Symphony No. 1 La Nuit des tropiques (original orchestration) Symphony No. 2 A Montevideo (original version) Samuel Adler's arrangement for piano and orchestra of The Union, Op. 48, with Eugene List Variations on the Brazilian National Hymn, original version (with List) Grande Tarantelle for piano and orchestra (with List) Jan Klusák's First Invention (LSO) Anatoly Lyadov's From the Apocalypse (Butler U.) Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 (first recording of the second (1927) version, with William Black and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra) Ferdinand Ries's Violin Concerto No. 1 in E minor (Op.24) (Aaron Rosand and Butler U.) Christian Sinding's Rondo Infinito (Butler U.) Richard Yardumian's Passacaglia, Recitative and Fugue for piano and orchestra (with John Ogdon and the RPO).