Walter Legge

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Walter Legge (June 1, 1906 - March 22, 1979) was an influential British classical record producer, most notably for EMI.

Legge first joined HMV in 1927 mainly to work for the editorial of the company's retailing magazine, but he caught the eye of another famous record producer, Fred Gaisberg, and was soon taking an active role in their recording procedures. Between 1933 and 1938 Legge also worked as a music critic for Manchester Guardian.

During his years at EMI Legge contracted and recorded many artists, including Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (to whom he was married since 1953), Maria Callas, Thomas Beecham, Otto Klemperer, Dinu Lipatti and many others. Legge finally left EMI in 1964, thanks to ill health and growing dissent with the management.

His memoirs, edited by his widow, Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, were published in 1982. They contain this statement, which does much to explain his disenchantment with EMI and its increasingly powerful internal committees:

• 'I am convinced that in the arts, committees are useless. What is necessary are people like Karajan, Culshaw and me; we know not only how to achieve the best artistic results but how to attract the public and carry out the whole operation with carefully chosen collaborators. Democracy is fatal for the arts; it leads only to chaos or the achievement of new and lower common denominators of quality.'

That extract shows surprising goodwill towards Karajan - whom many regarded as having deserted Legge in the 1960s - and John Culshaw of Decca, Legge's great rival as a recording producer. Legge was not always so benign:

• 'If producers and scenic designers are allowed to continue their writing of graffiti and vulgarity and stupidity on masterpieces as you experienced in Fidelio and Così—not to mention Chéreau at Bayreuth—we shall be forced to insist that they write the libretto and music to match the rubbish they put on the stage!'

Legge also founded the Philharmonia Orchestra as well as the Sibelius Society of London.

Reference

Schwarzkopf (ed): On and Off the Record. Faber and Faber, 1982. ISBN 0 571 14912 Xde:Walter Legge fr:Walter Legge nl:Walter Legge ja:ウォルター・レッグ zh:华尔特·李格