Music lover who celebrated French composers
Obituary: Felix Aprahamian
The Guardian
Friday January 21, 2005
By John Amis
In a way, Felix Aprahamian, who has died aged 90, was an amateur, a
lover. A lover of music; also of men and, occasionally, women. He
loved the good things of life, but music came first – listening to it,
printed copies of it, books on it, and those who made it.
Felix was born in London. His father was a carpet dealer, an immigrant
Armenian, his mother an adorable rotund lady, a great cook and a good
mother to her three children, Francis, Florence and Felix. Felix was
her favourite: she indulged him, and he repaid her by staying with
her; in fact he lived in the same house in Muswell Hill for 85 years,
the house that he called, with Poe-faced humour, the House of Usher.
Indeed, the house nearly did fall once, when Felix, desperate for more
space for the ever-increasing amount of books and music, fitted up the
loft for more of the same. Cracks appeared in the structure, and the
loft had to be emptied.
It was an ordinary double-fronted building, but inside it was a shrine
where Music was worshipped. There were side altars devoted to tropical
fish, and the small garden was exotic, with rare plants and more fish
in pools. The music room had an organ, inherited from the organist
André Marchal and transplanted from Hendaye, in the French Basque
country, for the use of the blind organist David Liddle, a protege of
Felix’s.
There were also two pianos, on which the likes of the composers
Olivier Messiaen, Benjamin Britten, Francis Poulenc and soloist
Monique Haas had played, as well as Felix himself – he would regale
you with Ravel’s Ondine at the drop of a hat. He would also point out
a plane tree in front of the house which Poulenc had baptised one day
in an emergency.
Felix’s education was self-administered rather than academic. His
father had got him a job in the metal market, but already at 17 Felix
was pouring his energies into being assistant secretary of the Organ
Music Society. His three passions at that time were the organ, French
music and Frederick Delius (he visited the old composer at
Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris).
When I first met Felix, he was concert director of the London
Philharmonic Orchestra. During those precarious war years the
programmes had to be popular, but sometimes Felix was allowed his
head, and he would spread himself in the empty dress circle, following
the scores of Debussy, Delius and Bax. In the 1940s he was
effervescent, and if his activities and behaviour had appeared in a
novel, you would say it was overwritten. He lived in a constant flurry
and bustle, rushing from one place to another, finding the best food
in those days when the bill could not exceed five shillings; it was
lunch with Michael Tippett, tea with William Walton, dinner with
conductors Victor de Sabata or Charles Munch, and sometimes
consultations with Sir Thomas Beecham about Felix going to Paris to
engage singers for recordings.
Felix knew where to shop, where to find rare books or scores. He was
remarkable especially for his generosity: he helped dozens of young
musicians, gave them advice, made introductions for them, gave them
books and scores, fed them and sometimes put them up at the House of
Usher. Nothing was too much trouble. The general impression was of
somebody who was a mixture of characters from Proust and PG Wodehouse.
His finest achievement was that he made British music lovers more
familiar with French music. Working with Toni Mayer, cultural attaché
at the embassy in London, Felix organised over a hundred concerts for
the Free French during the second world war. Not just Debussy and
Ravel, but also Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Roussel, Florent Schmitt, not
forgetting Baroque masters such as Rameau and Couperin, through
Berlioz to all of Les Six and on to Messiaen. For the audiences it was
like an education that had previously been manquée .
Felix left his mark in fastidious details: a stylist when it came to
the programme notes and the design of flyaways and posters – even the
tickets looked elegant. The artists were the divine soprano Maggie
Teyte in the Indian summer of her career, tenor Peter Pears and
Britten, the Zorian Quartet, piano accompanist Gerald Moore, and
Tippett with his Morley College Choir (Felix sometimes sang bass with
them). Later, with the liberation of Paris, baritones Pierre Bernac
and Gérard Souzay, cellist Pierre Fournier, pianists Yvonne Lefebure,
Poulenc, Messiaen and his eventual wife Yvonne Loriod – these were
nuits alcyoniennes, to coin a phrase.
From 1946 to 1984, Felix joined United Music Publishers, agents for
most of the music publishers in Paris. He also became second string
critic for the Sunday Times (1948-89), and was notable for his purple
patches when inspired, enthusing about much and deprecating the
mandarins’ cheers for atonal music and the sort of pieces that
encouraged instrumentalists to make squeaks and burps that previously
they had tried not to make when learning to play.
As time went on, Felix somewhat blotted his book by being late with
his copy and even on occasion reviewing performances by artists who
had dropped out at the last moment. He ignored his friends’ demands
that he write an autobiography, because he could not fashion his
anecdotes and recollections in such a way that the events and
personalities came off the page.
One memory, as he often told it, was how he nearly met Peter Warlock
on the steps of the British Museum. In these stories Felix could be a
bit far-fetched. But then Felix was far-fetched. His last years,
sadly, were plagued by strokes and loss of hearing, but he could still
recall a life devoted to music and musicians; and in which he was
honoured by the French government, president of the Delius Society,
and held in great affection by all of his many friends.
Felix Aprahamian, music critic, organiser and publicist, born June 1
1914; died January 15 2005.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress