Walter Legge

Legge was probably one of the most influential numbers in the classical music market and probably one of the most exacting administrators and suppliers, setting high requirements for both recordings and shows. Many of the recordings he oversaw are legends, the platinum standards for all those comparisons. Astoundingly, he previously no formal musical teaching; he was completely self-taught. In 1927, he started are a writer in the still-new HMV label and later on, acted like a music critic for numerous newspapers so that as a music associate for Thomas Beecham at Covent Backyard. The battle interrupted musical existence in Britain, but following its summary, he created the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus in 1946 mainly as a residence orchestra for Columbia, where he worked well as an archive maker. While he produced several unforgettable recordings for the company, especially those from your 1951 Bayreuth Event, it had been his Angel/EMI materials that produced story after legend, like the de Sabata Tosca, the Bohm Così lover tutte, Toscanini’s documenting of Brahms’ four symphonies, Dinu Lipatti’s Chopin waltzes, the Klemperer Das Lied von der Erde, and almost twelve operetta recordings, many with Otto Ackermann. He also experienced a background for recognizing encouraging young performers and providing them exclusive agreements, and he was mainly responsible for starting the recording professions of Otto Klemperer, Dinu Lipatti, Hermann Victim, Nicolai Gedda, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Maria Callas. He was popular like a perfectionist, though he had not been above executive and developing a scandal in the music globe when, for the 1952 Tristan und Isolde, he substituted Elisabeth Schwartzkopf’s high Cs for Kirsten Flagstad. In 1968, he started a five-year stint as movie director from the Royal Opera Home. He was wedded to soprano Elisabeth Schwartzkopf, who starred in a number of from the EMI operettas. His memoirs, Terms and Music, aswell as Schwartzkopf’s personal memoirs of her spouse, are a uncovering view from the globe of music administration.