Felix Aprahamian ― Diaries and Selected Writings on Music

The music critic Felix Aprahamian (1914-2005) was a remarkable self-made man and bohemian whose enormous influence in musical circles was deeply founded in his practical experience of promoting music in London, notably by British and French composers. Early on he became interested in the organ and was soon in correspondence with the leading French names of the day - Andre Marchal, Charles Tournemire, Maurice Durufle and the young Olivier Messiaen. In 1933, the nineteen-year-old Aprahamian visited Frederick Delius in France, and while in Paris, met the aged Charles-Marie Widor. The surviving diaries, published here for the first time, document these events in detail. During the Second World War he acted as concert director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and became assistant to Thomas Beecham. After the liberation of Paris, a wide circle of outstanding French musicians and composers including Francis Poulenc, Messiaen, Pierre Bernac and Pierre Fournier became personal friends. Aprahamian made his name as music critic on the Sunday Times, where from 1948 to 1989 he was required reading. He helped numerous young musicians to develop their careers and was associated with many associations and musical organizations, notably the Delius Society. This assembled collection sheds new light on Aprahamian's life and work. His diaries and BBC World Service broadcasts uniquely illuminate London concert life in the 1930s, while his articles on many composers, musicians and works testify to his promotion of French and British music. His record and book reviews are all for the first time selected and republished here. The book evokes the almost vanished world of a music criticism both humane and strict, paying tribute to music's spontaneous and absolute qualities. It will be of interest to anyone following London concert life in the twentieth century, British music and in particular Delius, as well as organ and nineteenth- and twentieth-century French music. LEWIS FOREMAN is a writer on British music and the editor of The John Ireland Companion (Boydell, 2011) and author of Bax: A Composer and His Time. SUSAN FOREMAN is an author of various books on Whitehall, and together with Lewis Foreman, London. A Musical Gazetteer (2005).