FELIX APRAHAMIAN (1914 -
2005): A personal memoir
As a writer and critic,
Felix Aprahamian, who died in London
last month at the age of ninety, was
a big name to me when I was at school.
By the time I first met him he had already
been long retired from his mainstream
activities that included being a Sunday
Times critic and writer for the
Gramophone. To know him was an
inestimable privilege because it seemed
he had met practically everyone who
counted in classical music in the twentieth
century. This emerged through his legendary
stories which usually involved one or
more of such people. At first - and
God forgive me for even thinking this
– I was sceptical about the veracity
of some of them. But I soon came to
realise, after a spot of covert research,
that they really were true and were
a function of a bounding enthusiasm
that lead him to having a finger in
a seemingly infinite number of pies.
As an unstoppable raconteur
(he would fix you in his line of sight
and point authoritatively at you so
that you felt the story had been stored
especially for you) he knew how to gauge
his audience, and if it was gossip that
was required then that was what was
delivered. If it was musical knowledge
and wisdom that one hoped from him,
however technical, then that was there
for the taking. I remember him telling
me his anecdote of how, when in Paris
at the age of 19, he was called upon
by Charles-Marie Widor to turn the pages
for the great organist in the organ
loft at the church of St-Sulpice. Felix,
something of an organist himself, said,
"I learned more about organ registration,
sitting next to him during that recital,
than at any time in my life". He
then went on to succinctly describe,
in technical detail, just what it was
that he had learned.
Felix had an encyclopaedic
knowledge of a huge range of music,
enabled by a quite prodigious memory.
He would make it his business to know
about some things even if he was totally
out of sympathy. In this category was
most C20th avant-garde music. Unless
it were French. French music was a specialism
and a passion, and there were many in
France during the war who owed much
to his efforts in organising, in London,
an extensive series of concerts devoted
to promoting the music of that country
and in aid of the Free French cause.
Grateful composers and musicians stayed
with him in his house in north London,
among them Poulenc and Messiaen. His
mutually affectionate correspondence
with the latter over a period of fifty
years has been published and constitutes
an important document.
Only a few years ago,
as he started to become a little frail,
I took over some of his pre–concert
talk commitments. I knew it would be
a hard, if not impossible act to follow.
This was more than amply confirmed at
a conversation I had with him shortly
before I started, during the course
of which he let drop, "As Sibelius
said to me…..."
John Leeman
