Obituary: Felix Aprahamian
The Independent – United Kingdom
Jan 18, 2005
Lewis Foreman
THE MUSIC critic Felix Aprahamian was a remarkable self-made man, an
amateur who became a professional, whose enormous influence in musical
circles was deeply founded in his practical experience of promoting
music in London, notably by British and French composers.
The son of an immigrant Armenian family – his father, Avedis
Aprahamian (who had been born Hovhanessian), was naturalised at the
turn of the century – Felix lived until the end of his life in the
family home in Muswell Hill, London, to which they moved on 1 January
1919, after Felix recovered from diphtheria. There he accumulated the
unique library which survives him.
Felix attended the local Tollington High School, and, becoming
interested in the organ, had lessons from Eric Thiman, whom he
assisted at Park Chapel, Crouch End. Felix Aprahamian would explain,
half-jokingly, “I failed Matriculation because I discovered music”,
and otherwise only acquired formal education from evening classes,
notably at the Working Men’s College in Crowndale Road, where he later
lectured. His father’s carpet business was adversely affected by the
crash in 1929, but even so he was able to use his contacts to find
Felix a position in the City. He became an office boy in Fenchurch
Street and Mincing Lane, but had no interest in the metal exchange or
the produce markets, and at the same time was developing his musical
interests by constant concert-going and by moonlighting with various
organisations.
He worked for the Organ Music Society, of which he was assistant
secretary from the age of 17. In this capacity he was soon in
correspondence with the leading French names of the day – Andre
Marchal, Charles Tournemire, Maurice Durufle and the young Olivier
Messiaen, even in his teens arranging their visits to London. When the
society announced a series of improvisations in London, Aprahamian
wrote to the leading composers of the day asking them to write themes,
his respondents including Jean Sibelius, Benjamin Britten, Albert
Roussel, William Walton and Constant Lambert.
Aprahamian’s enthusiasm led him to strike up acquaintance with many
composers, and he never lost an opportunity to have his copies of
their scores inscribed. In August 1933, the 19-year-old Aprahamian
with two friends visited Frederick Delius at Grez-sur-Loing, and while
in Paris, with his London organ credentials, inveigled himself a seat
in the organ loft beside the aged Charles-Marie Widor, the old man
obligingly autographing Felix’s copy of the score.
Thanks to his surviving diaries, these events are documented in
amazing detail. Aprahamian could make a slim reminiscence go an
enormously long way, and once, in the 1980s, to a group of visiting
London press correspondents, he gave the full range of his
contacts. One journalist said as he left the room: “That must the be
most amazing example of sustained name-dropping I have ever heard!”
Quite where Aprahamian acquired his fluent French he never revealed,
though he did well in the subject at school, and he would recall his
father first taking him to Paris in 1923. Yet during the Second World
War he was able to broadcast in French from Bush House and certainly
conversed fluently with his French friends and colleagues,
interpreting for others where necessary. When, in the late 1980s, a
French radio team visited London preparing a programme on British
composers, he was far from pleased when they stopped him in full flow
and insisted on recording his contribution in English, over which a
French actor later read a translation.
Working for ARP, he spent the war as concert director of the London
Philharmonic Orchestra, and had vivid memories of the ruins of Queen’s
Hall the night after it was bombed – he kept one of the posters taken
from the smouldering ruins. This took him to visit Keith Douglas, who
for two years (1940, 1941) ran the Proms on behalf of the Royal
Philharmonic Society from the Victoria Hotel, Rickmansworth. His work
with the LPO led to an association with Sir Thomas Beecham, the
conductor responding to Aprahamian’s knowledge of Delius and the
French repertoire, Aprahamian becoming an informal assistant.
Aprahamian’s sympathy for and knowledge of French music led him to
become in 1942 the organiser of the Concerts de Musique Francaise for
the Free French in London, working with Tony Mayer, Conseiller
Culturel from the French Embassy, which gave him access to all the
leading French performers and composers of the day. He presented 104
concerts in all. On one occasion, he found the Princesse de Polignac
standing in the queue outside the Wigmore Hall and was able to usher
her inside.
After the liberation of Paris, a wide circle of outstanding French
musicians and composers included Francis Poulenc, Messiaen, Pierre
Bernac and Pierre Fournier, many of whom became personal
friends. Aprahamian worked from 1946 to 1984 for United Music
Publishers, the principal agent for French music in the UK, his job
described as “consultant”. In fact he promoted French music in the UK,
from a delightful office in Bloomsbury lined with photographs of the
greatest French artists of the day inscribed to himself and dominated
by a piano piled with music. Aprahamian’s energy at this time was
prodigious, one former colleague describing him as “effervescent”.
In 1982 Marchal’s chamber organ was brought from the Basque country
and installed at Muswell Hill specifically for Aprahamian’s protege
the organist David Liddle. Aprahamian was particularly concerned with
the promotion of Messiaen and Poulenc, and later became associated
with the organist Jennifer Bate, facilitating the arrangements for the
London premiere of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint Sacrement and playing
host to Messiaen and his wife. When in waggish mood, he would take one
to the door of his house pointing out a tree against which, in a
moment of emergency, Poulenc had relieved himself.
Aprahamian claimed his first contribution to the musical press was in
1931 and his first in the newspapers in 1937. He had his first by-line
as a critic when he was asked by the Daily Express to review a concert
he had not attended and, by managing to find a way of evoking Faure’s
Ballade which he described as “evergreen”, without actually describing
the performance, found himself a working critic.
He made his name as Deputy Music Critic on the Sunday Times where, for
41 years from 1948 to 1989, he was required reading, notable for his
literate and humane commentary, and for his desire to cover the
breadth of London music-making rather than always the plums, and for
his championship of the British and French music of the early 20th
century at a time of serial extremes.
Aprahamian also contributed erudite and well-judged record reviews,
writing for Gramophone from 1964 until 1975. In his later years as
critic he found it increasingly difficult to meet deadlines, and
Gramophone dropped him. His end as a critic came when he published a
review of a Gennadi Rozhdestvensky concert on the night Rozhdestvensky
was ill.
Aprahamian’s innumerable programme notes set new standards for
literacy and elegance, and his accounts notably of his favourite
French repertoire deserve collection. He also wrote a great many
articles, reminiscences and introductions to books, and edited and
translated Claude Samuel’s Conversations with Olivier Messiaen
(1976). Nigel Simeone has published collections of his correspondence
with Messiaen and Tournemire. Aprahamian was delighted when
commissioned by John Murray to write his autobiography (“Byron’s
publisher,” he would say), but was never able to make progress.
The warmth of London music’s appreciation of Aprahamian was all too
apparent when on June 1994 the Nash Ensemble presented an 80th
birthday concert for him at a packed Wigmore Hall. The programme
consisted largely of French music.
Aprahamian was celebrated for the brilliant detail of his recall, and
once when engaged in conversation with Lady Bliss on the subject of
butterflies impressed her and everyone present with his knowledge of
the Latin names of all species mentioned. Thus, when he suffered a
stroke in 1993, his characteristic tap of a finger on his temple with
the remark “The old clockwork’s still OK” was so reassuring. This,
too, made his final illness so distressing when, after a succession of
small strokes, he often would not recognise his visitors or
remember. He also lost most of his hearing, which became distorted,
organ music being most painful.
Felix Aprahamian was a showman, an autodidact and a complete
one-off. He helped many young musicians develop their careers and was
associated with many associations and musical organisation, perhaps
being most proud of his presidency of the Delius Society. In 1996 he
was appointed Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in
recognition of his contribution to French culture.
Felix Aprahamian, music critic and concert organiser: born London 5
June 1914; Honorary Secretary, Organ Music Society 1935-70; Concerts
Manager, London Philharmonic Orchestra 1940-46; Deputy Music Critic,
Sunday Times 1948-89; died London 15 January 2005.