Grade 1 Violin

    In the series of great impresarios, Victor and Lillian Hochhauser were and are among the greatest. They had a wonderful double act which served them admirably through unimaginable difficulties dealing with the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s on, modern Russia (sometimes even more difficult) and the People's Republic of China. Like Hurok, the Hochhausers made links between East and West through thick and thin. Making money out of music is one of the most difficult things to achieve. On the one hand all orchestras, Festivals, Music societies and above all opera houses receive subsidies without which they could not exist. On the other hand, certain geniuses are able to make a good living - sometimes a very good living by  promoting the same activities of concerts, ballet and opera. Their achievements are not to be underestimated. Victor and Lillian inspired the love and friendship of some of the greatest artists of their time: Menuhin, Oistrakh, Rostropovich. Victor's fi...

    Another great impresario and agent was Sol Hurok. In his time his name was  as famous as any of the Hollywood studio bosses - Jack Warner, Sam Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer and what have you. Hurok is said to have gone bankrupt more than once but his achievements outweighed his failures many times. He began his successful career with the simple idea of printing billboards in all the various languages of the many New York communities. He never lost his love and admiration for great artists. I don't think he manipulated them in a pejorative way or bullied them as some agents did and do. There is a story I very much like about him because it took place late in his career with one of the artists I still represent - the great Russian conductor Yuri Simonov. Simonov was chief conductor of the Boslhoi Theatre from 1970 - 85 and during that golden period when the ensemble included great singers such as Vishnevskaya, Obraztsova, Arkhipova, Atlantov, Masurok and Nesterenko, they tour...

    I would like to honour some of the great unsung heros of my profession from time to time in this Blog. The first is Gabriel Astruc. Astruc was Diaghilev's agent. Diaghilev was thought of as being the greatest impresario of all time but a great deal of Diaghilev's work was done by the unfortunate Astruc who made arrangements carried out administration and not least raised the money and built the Theatre des Champs Elysees. I say the unfortunate Astruc because he committed suicide in the end. He is not the only one to have died by his own hand.

  From my teenage years, Boris Christoff had been one of my idols. Not only mine. He occupied a place in operatic life at least in Europe on a par with Callas, Di Stefano and his brother-in-law Tito Gobbi. I am sometimes shocked to realise that only Callas's name is still remembered by the general public.  Boris Christoff has been described as one of the greatest singers of all time and that he was. When he appeared onstage he held the audience in the palm of his hand. Such was his magnetism that it was impossible to look anywhere else apart from him. He simply wouldn't allow it. Of course this was done with all sorts of tricks as well as his amazingly contrived appearance, his great acting and his remarkable voice and artistry. Clips and even a whole opera with Cristoff can be seen on YouTube. In some of these such as The Death of Boris (Boris Godunov) the effect of the grainy old film and less than HD sound is equal to the effect in the theatre. Something one cannot say of p...

    Another artist I had first met during my stint at the English Bach Festival was the great Dutch harpsichordist, organist and director Gustav Leonhardt.  At a later event presented by Lina, I got to know Karlheinz Stockhausen while moving loudspeakers for a lecture-demonstration he gave at St. John’s Smith Square. After the event he expressed a wish to come back to our place. We had just moved into our new house and we sat on the floor until 5am while Stockhausen changed our lives with the most stunning conversation we had ever participated in. Also present were Jill, my wife of barely a year, my old friend Nicholas Snowman and John Tavener. Soon after, I wrote to Stockhausen asking him if he would be interested in collaborating with me. Astonishingly, no agent had ever approached him. He agreed. He gave me a list of programmes he and the Stockhausen group could play at any time and a list of his orchestral works he could conduct. His conditions were clear. He gave m...

    I think it was the St. John's Passion in one of the colleges at Oxford University for which my boss, Lina Lalandi had booked the great Swiss tenor Ernst Haefliger to sing the Evangelist and no doub ay tenor arias. I forget who was cnducting but I fancy James Bowman was the countertenor,  Studying Modern Laguagesat the university I was able to speak to Haefliger in German and he must have taken a shine to me because he offered to help in my ambition to become an agent. He offered to introduce me to his American agent Ann Colbert if I would go to New York when he was planning to be there. I thought this was a good idea and planned a trip to the USA around the promised meeting. I hade never been to North America before and so it was all very exciting. My first cal was to Boston where my father had a contact called Dr. Max Tennis who himself had a close friendship with Sol Hurok's man in Boston whose name I forget. As well as Boston I would visit a conductor of my acquain...

  As often happens, I discovered much more about my first boss Lina Lalandi after she died than when I knew her. For example she had modeled for Chanel and had hidden Allied airmen under her bed in Athens during the war. Lina taught us how not to do everything. Her way of putting together a programme for her 'English Bach Festival' (you couldn't speak of 'organising) was to call every prominent musician in the world from numbers in her little black book about 3 or 4 months before the opening concert and ask them if they had any availability in the period. Of course 90% did not but of the 10% who didn't end the conversation there she would invite to give a concert, adding that she didn't have any money. Another 90% of the respondents would put the phone down then and there, she then added that in the case of an artist of their standing and importance the festival would also ask if they migh be able to give a donation. The astonishing thing was that there were a f...