Chapter One
WALTER LEGGE
An Appreciation DORLE SORIA
Last summer, flying home from my San Francisco master classes, I stopped long enough in New York to see Dorle Soria. I had not seen her since her husband, Dario, had died. We talked mostly about how we were picking up our lives. She already had new and exciting editing and writing projects. I had my master classes and my work on this book. But we wouldn't be human if our talk had not turned backwards: when Dorle and Dario had founded Angel Records, when Walter made his fabulous records which they published, and when the three of them helped launch me as an international artist. We talked about the work that all of us had loved and what an incredibly happy life we both had with our men—Walter would have said with our "chumps."
I don't believe there is any better way to introduce Walter to the reader than by reprinting Dorle Soria's appreciation.
THE NAME of Walter Legge, unknown to the general public, is a famous one in the recording industry and inner music circles. He was not only the producer of a legendary catalogue of classical recordings but he was responsible for the careers of many great conductors and artists of the concert and opera worlds. "A Diaghilev where music is concerned" is how Gerald Moore once described him. When he died, March 22, 1979, almost seventy-three years old, his death inspired a remarkable series of tributes.
Opera: "With the death of Walter Legge the world has lost one of the most important figures behind the music scene of the past fifty years ... he was responsible for ... some of the greatest musical achievement of his time, for the Philharmonia Orchestra, his unique recordings of music, to his talent-spotting and assisting of young musicians on their way towards world careers. Perhaps the greatest musical tribute I can pay to him is to put on the record that, on three different occasions, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, and Dinu Lipatti once told me that they knew no man from whom they could learn more."
Records and Recording: "Possibly the greatest classical producer the industry has known."
Gramophone: "His achievement is huge, his contribution to twentieth-century music certain to survive for many decades."
The Observer: "The musical establishment regarded Walter Legge as a bold, had baron; and as an old-style entrepreneur he did fit uncomfortably into the world of carefully balanced committees which increasingly determine most of our cultural activities. Legge was a loner. In a country that makes a fetish of the second rate Legge was a fanatic for quality, and therein lay the source of his achievements." In the same vein was this letter to the Financial Times signed by Lord Donaldson and Sir Isaiah Berlin, both long connected with the Covent Garden Board, and Sir Claus Moser, its chairman: "His founding of the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, his prodigious knowledge of opera and singers and his ability to recognise talent, added very greatly to musical life in Britain. He trod on a great many toes, but in part this was due to his unswerving pursuit of the first rate, and undisguised contempt for anything that fell below it."
The French magazine Lyrica: "Through him masterpieces found a new audience. We found new ears. Legge made musicians of discophiles. Thank you, Walter. Most of them do not even know your name. May they bless you?
Die Presse, Vienna: "If things were as they should be, and gratitude were still an esteemed virtue, the whole music world of today ought to stand at Walter Legge's graveside and mourn. What distinguished him cannot be learned: the instinct for music, the enthusiasm and total submersion in music, will surely not be found for many a day united in a single person."
After the Legge-Schwarzkopf Juilliard master classes in the autumn of 1976 Andrew Porter hailed the event and the participants: "When Legge married Schwarzkopf two perfectionists joined forces. Legge, although unmentioned in the 1975 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, has probably done more than anyone else alive to raise standards of musical performance—not just in Britain, where he founded and directed the Philharmonia Orchestra and engaged Karajan, Cantelli, Klemperer, Giulini and, for two memorable Brahms concerts, Toscanini to conduct it, but internationally, through many, many recordings of performances executed to his exacting requirements—matching artists to repertory, casting, coaching, coaxing, and, at recording sessions, commending or criticizing until he was satisfied: as determined to put onto disc the best that artists could do under the best possible conditions. ... Legge's genius was for recognizing and remembering in detail what constitutes greatness in musical execution, for perceiving potential greatness, and for inspiring new interpreters to learn from and emulate —not merely ape—the best achievements of their predecessors. The world owes him a debt for having sought out, sifted, promulgated and preserved for posterity the best in mid-twentieth-century musical performance."
Recently we heard Christa Ludwig talk of Walter Legge in the course of a telecast of a program of Brahms Lieder. "He taught me how to make the word sun shine and how to make the word flower bloom."
His patience with the great artists with whom he worked and his sensitivity to them were characteristic. Carlo Maria Giulini told us of this episode in their relationship. He was in New York a few days after Walter Legge had died and we talked of him. "He was musically incorruptible. And he founded a new school of recording—he was its leader, its capo di scuola. I think he would have liked to conduct. In fact, he said he once tried. But there was no accord between head and hand. But he knew everything there was to know about an orchestra and about voices. If he cast an opera you could sign without looking." Once, he said, Legge asked him to record the Tchaikovsky Fifth. He refused, saying he felt no sympathy for the work, but Legge persuaded him. The recording began. Fifteen minutes had gone by when Giulini put down his baton. "I can't go on." Legge said nothing. He dismissed the orchestra. "And you know what a loss that is to a company," Giulini said. "Then we took a long walk together in Hyde Park. We talked of other things."
Walter Legge was an Englishman by birth, a European by choice. He spoke German so well that many people thought of him as one and addressed him as "Herr Leg-geh." He was as much at home at La Scala as at Covent Garden, perhaps more so, and when he was producing Italian opera recordings there he might have been brought up on pasta instead of porridge. In Vienna his mother might have been a Wienerin; no Viennese could have created a more authentic or heady series of Strauss and Lehár operettas which we were to successfully publicize as "Champagne" recordings. He was also comfortable in the United States, where during the past few years he and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf joined in master classes in California, the Middle West, and in New York. He had even talked of moving there. Perhaps the one place where he was not at home was France, the country where he lived after giving up a luxurious house on Lake Geneva with a private port and a garden which he had lovingly planted in the shape of the letter E for Elisabeth. Gardening, outside of books and music, was his greatest outside interest, along with a genuine feeling for good food and good wine.
He spent his last years at St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat but he did not thrive on sun and sea and leisure. He longed for closed-in recording studios and libraries, concert halls and opera houses. After leaving EMI he was never a fulfilled person. In 1967, after a serious illness, he wrote us: "I wander from clinic to clinic, from doctor to doctor, quack to quack (and teach me the difference between doctor and quack and I'll give you an Oscar!). One thing is certain: three years' indolence were probably the cause of my illness. I must start doing what I and I only know how to do. If you have any ideas for a useful and profitable discharge of this dynamo, send them to your devoted old friend who still looks back with longing on Angelic days."
When Walter died they had finally sold their house and Elisabeth was busy packing. On March 25 there was a cremation service in Zürich at which a devoted friend, John Coveney of Angel Records, gave the eulogy and spoke of Legge's enduring monument, "the E.M.I. classical catalogue which even today is fifty percent composed of his productions." Among those present was Elisabeth Furtwängler, widow of the conductor. On the announcement card was printed the last lines from "Es siegte die Stärke, und krönet zum Lohn/die Schönheit und Weisheit mit ewiger Kron'." It was in Zauberflöte that he first heard and saw a pretty young blonde soprano who one day was to become his wife. It was in Berlin, November 1937. He was recording the opera with Sir Thomas Beecham. Walter has recalled: "We had an admirable chorus of students and young professional singers, among them a Fräulein Schwarzkopf who had not yet made her debut."
On June 6 there was a "Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Walter Legge" in London at St. James's Church, the Wren-designed church which is an oasis of peace in the hurly-burly of Piccadilly. H.C. Robbins Landon, the Haydn scholar, gave the address. The Philharmonia Chorus sang Bruckner and Mozart. Manoug Parikian, former concertmaster of the Philharmonia, with Geoffrey Parsons at the piano, played Beethoven. Kevin Langan, Walter Legge's last protégé, sang Wolf's "Um Mitternacht." Elisabeth had told us that she had wanted someone to sing Wagner's "Träume." "Then my old teacher Maria Ivogün said, ‘But you must be represented on the program. Isn't there an old recording?’ And I said yes, there was." And so, at the end of the service, after the blessing, the voice of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf filled the church.
Family, friends, and members of Britain's musical "establishment" had gathered at the church to pay honor to Walter Legge. There were representatives of the Royal College of Music, the Royal Opera House and Royal Festival Hall, of the Philharmonia Orchestra, of EMI, Decca, and the BBC, and of the Arts Council of Great Britain; the University of Michigan, where Legge had participated in master classes, was also represented. And then there were music critics and artists and Antonino Tonini of La Scala, who had coached singers in many of the Italian opera recordings, and Lady Beecham. Walter Legge's last writings, a brilliant series of articles, had been devoted to a centenary tribute to Sir Thomas Beecham. After he died, Elisabeth arranged for a plot in Vienna's Central Cemetery near the graves of the composers Walter Legge lived for—Beethoven and Brahms, Schubert, the Johann Strausses, and particularly Hugo Wolf, for whose recognition he had fought almost single-handedly.
My husband, Dario, and I met Walter Legge in 1952. Dario, then president of Cetra-Soria Records, had been asked by EMI to start a new label, a North American outlet for the recordings of its subsidiary, the Columbia Gramophone Company—usually known as English Columbia—of which Walter Legge was artists-and-repertoire director. The company was launched in September 1953. We named it Angel Records, after an almost forgotten turn-of-the-century EMI trademark, "at the sign of the Recording Angel." Dario, who had sold Cetra-Soria to Capitol, became Angel's president. I was in charge of artists and repertoire and publicity.
Until January 1958, when Dario resigned, we worked with Walter Legge in closest connection and with a shared dedication. Brilliant, inventive, highly competitive, a man whose technical expertise matched his musical knowledge, Legge was indefatigable on behalf of Angel, persuading great artists, attracting young ones, developing a broad-based catalogue of extraordinary quality. He was a demon for work and had no patience with time-restricting unions or nine-to-five habits. Since we were equally absorbed, ideas flowed back and forth between us in almost daily letters. We had our own jokes and a private language like schoolchildren. If someone had a sudden inspiration it was called an F.O.G.—Flash of Genius. If it failed it was dismissed as just a mind-muddling FOG.
From our Angel years together I have chosen a few typical excerpts from a vast collection of letters and memoranda, each characteristic of some facet of Walter's erudite and entertaining personality.
Sept. 11, 1953. About the now legendary La Scala-de Sabata-Callas-Gobbi-di Stefano Tosca. "Tosca was a difficult birth. De Sabata reduced the whole staff to tears (literally) either of rage, exasperation, or nervous exhaustion. I alone remained dry-eyed and cool-headed, mainly owing to a daily consumption of six large bottles of mineral water per session. The results put all previous attempts to record Italian opera into cool shade both artistically and technically. This is so far superior to both Puritani and Lucia that I beg you in your own interests to hold up the other Italian operas until Tosca is published. If we start with Tosca we shall probably sell the rest on the reputation we make with it."
Nov. 16, 1953. Until we started Angel all records had been left open for playing before purchase. We were the first to put out and advertise "factory-sealed records." Walter quipped: "Suggested slogan for your factory-sealed records: ‘Every Angel a Virgin.’"
Jan. 1, 1954. "All the fears for Karajan's debut as a conductor of Italian opera in La Scala were groundless! Lucia was a triumph for him and Callas such as Milan has not seen for years."
July 6, 1954. During the McCarthy witch-hunting period in the States and concerning a possible recording of the Bach Double Concerto with the Oistrakhs. "What do you think the American reaction would be if we actually pulled off for Angel a recording expedition into Russia to record father and son Oistrakh and anything else we could pick up? Think this one over carefully. I don't want to read in Time magazine of a cross-examination of 2-D Sofia before thrice-to-be-damned McCarthy!"
May 4, 1954. I was a Max Beerbohm fan and had asked Walter whether it would be possible to persuade him to read from his works. "I have spent one of the most enchanting afternoons of my life with Beerbohm and the recording starts at 3 o'clock on 3rd June at the Hotel Moderne, Rapallo."
June 7, 1954, 6 A.M. The highs and lows of a producer's life. "Finis coronet opus! We have made the long doubted Max recordings. I am taking with me for you two exquisite cartoons, one of them hitherto unpublished (and also to be returned to their creator). Otherwise only chaos in Italy. Karajan telephoned at dawn that he cannot conduct Pagliacci because of his shoulder trouble. The night before, Callas suddenly decided she could not sing in the Verdi Requiem. De Sabata and I spent yesterday telephoning and telegraphing her. So far without avail. I am reminded of the occasion when Klemperer in a loud voice asked an orchestra: ‘What is merde in English?’"
Jan. 11, 1955. After the publication of a deluxe edition of the Mozart Complete Works for Piano Solo played by Gieseking. "Unless you have already done so, do not protest against the High Fidelity review of Gieseking. We left out one or two small and such palpably inferior pieces in piety to Mozart's memory. Admittedly, he had sown all his musical wild oats before he was ten but there was no point in bringing up mistakes of his childhood. There is nothing worse than getting involved in controversies with musicologists."
Sept. 13, 1955. After recording sessions of Rigoletto beset with crises and prima donna problems. "I do not know whether the American Trade Unions have the same principle as the English of demanding danger money for those of their members who are engaged in particularly hazardous or possibly mortal work! If so, I am sending my bill to you for the Rigoletto recording."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from ON AND OFF THE RECORD by ELISABETH SCHWARZKOPF. Copyright © 1982 by Musical Adviser Establishment. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Copyright © 1982 Musical Adviser Establishment.
All rights reserved.
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