Sunday Times (London)
January 23, 2005, Sunday
Felix Aphrahamian (1914-2005)
by David Cairns
I got to know Felix Aprahamian, who died last week, when I began
writing for The Sunday Times in the 1970s. As number-two music
critic, 1948-89, Felix had the job of rounding up, in a few hundred
deftly turned words, the events of the week not covered by the main
review. Felix was the ideal person to do it: he knew everyone and
everything. Not that he was ever a familiar public figure. One of
that remarkable band of musical Armenians, he operated, very
effectively, behind the scenes. The average music-lover would have
had no idea how important he was as middleman. As teenage secretary
of the Organ Society, Felix arranged for Messiaen and Durufle to come
here, and thereafter energetically promoted them. French music and
the organ were his great loves.
The blind organist Andre Marchal left him his chamber organ in his
will; it was installed in the family house in Muswell Hill where
Felix spent most of his 90 years. There -or in his fabulous
Japanese-style garden with its famous tree, against which Poulenc
once relieved himself -Felix would preside over a company of friends
and acquaintances, delighting in showing them his vast collection of
scores, many autographed by their composers. But though he loved
telling you what he had done and was a wonderful gossip, he was not
bigheaded. He once told me Beecham had him to dinner only because Sir
Thomas’s friends had been driven away by the interminable monologues
of his wife. I don’t doubt Beecham appreciated Felix as the original
he was. He was the most kind and considerate of colleagues and
critics, but he had a mischievous side. His profile of Sir Malcolm
Sargent -“Flash Harry” to the musical profession -caused more than
one rehearsal to break up in laughter, as a member of the orchestra
insisted on reading out: “… quick as a flash. Harry him though we
may …”