Conductor helps link church to Europe

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — When Igor Gruppman and his wife were baptized into the LDS Church nearly 30 years ago in Los Angeles, the church gained not only two members but two major links to future European Latter-day Saints.

This week, Gruppman, the principal conductor for the Orchestra at Temple Square, will lead his all-volunteer orchestra in performing some of Russia's finest classical music for audiences in Salt Lake City. The concert, "An Evening of Russian Music," will feature works by composers Glinka and Tchaikovsky March 19 and 20. And Gruppman is expected to play a violin solo.

__IMAGE1__He said leading such a talented group at Temple Square is the "high point in his career," a significant thought from someone who's both conducted and performed on the world's most prestigious stages including Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Years before Craig Jessop, the former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, called Gruppman and his wife to co-conduct the Orchestra at Temple Square, the church asked the Gruppmans to assist in the ecclesiastical review and retranslation of the Doctrine and Covenants "before there were any endowed native speakers from Russia," Gruppman said during a phone interview.

"We also translated and recorded all the temple ordinances in Russian," said Gruppman, who was born in Ukraine and went to school in Russia. "It was a very, very special experience. It was sacred to us."

But the couple's work was largely preparatory, because the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed yet and the church was still unwelcome.

__IMAGE2__"I remember asking Elder (Dallin H.) Oaks (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), 'When do you think Russia, the Soviet Union at that time, will be open? And when do you think we will be able to send missionaries there?' Gruppman recalled. "His answer was very prophetic, really: He said, 'The Russian people are ready to hear the gospel. (And) when the church is able to absorb them and we're ready and worthy to go there, the land will be open.' Six or seven years afterward, some of the republics of the former Soviet Union were dedicated for missionary work."

Gruppman was one of the first American Latter-day Saints to go and speak to the new Saints. Since then, he's talked with Saints all around Europe at firesides where he says they've "sacrificed so much to stay in the church. … Members there are strong but always in need of support, energy and inspiration."

As recently as two months ago, while on a trip to conduct concerts at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, he was a guest speaker for missionaries. And he is planning on returning to Europe to attend the dedication of the Kiev Ukraine Temple, the first and only temple in the former Soviet Union.

But for the past week he's been focused on the delicate task at hand: being the kind of "musical missionary" former President Gordon B. Hinckley envisioned when he created the Orchestra at Temple Square in 1999, an initiative Gruppman said he was involved with from the beginning — selecting members and being involved in its debut performance.

Conducting is more than educating musicians, he said. It's "inspiring them to go to the depths of that music and its interpretation and bring the audience the entire package."

While classical music may relax many people, Gruppman said it's rarely calming for him. He rests by listening to more modern music, like jazz, because classical music "immediately engages (him) so much, all of (his) senses."

"It makes me too involved and tired," he said. "When I have a moment I just want to be lightly distracted for a bit.

"You have to find moments to recuperate and prepare yourself for the next time when you're to dig deep in your soul and bring it all out."

E-mail:jhancock@desnews.com