Felix Aprahamian - Early Career

Early Career

In 1935 Aprahamian was made Secretary of the Organ Music Society, and the same year one of his first articles, "Eugene Goossens in London", was published in the Musical Times. During World War II, he worked as Concert Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and from 1942 onwards he helped Tony Mayer organise the extraordinary series Concerts de Musique Française at the Wigmore Hall in London. In 1946 he joined United Music Publishers as a consultant and, with Mayer at the French Embassy, played a central role in bringing French music to post-war British audiences. In 1948 he became Deputy Music Critic of the Sunday Times and stayed for 41 years; his reviews were notable for their prose and enthusiasm.

He first corresponded with Olivier Messiaen in 1936 and was responsible for organising the first complete performance in England of Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur, played by the composer himself at St Alban's Church, Holborn, in 1938. They developed a warm friendship which lasted until the composer's death in 1992. His first encounter with Francis Poulenc was well before the start of World War II; their first meeting was at J. & W. Chester's music shop, when he asked the composer to sign a photograph, duly inscribed "Qui est ce monstre?" ("Who is this monster?"). The two became firm friends and Aprahamian often visited Poulenc in Paris. His talent for making friends such as these led to many memorable events at his house in Muswell Hill. Poulenc first played through his Elégie in memory of Dennis Brain there, and in 1945 Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod gave a private rendition of Messiaen's Visions de l’Amen before the British première.

Among British composers, his greatest passion was for Delius (he was an adviser to the Delius Trust from 1961, and later the President of the Society), and he was on amicable terms with Benjamin Britten, William Walton and Michael Tippett: while at the LPO, he was instrumental in arranging the premiere of Tippett's A Child of Our Time in 1944. Other friends included the conductors Thomas Beecham, Victor de Sabata, Roger Désormière, Ernest Ansermet and Charles Münch, as well as the singer Maggie Teyte, the cellist Pierre Fournier and the pianist Monique Haas.