Peter Andry
Peter Edward Andry,
Born in
After retiring from EMI in 1988, Andry headed a new classical label Warner Classics, before retiring finally from the recording industry in 1996.
Life and career
Early years
Andry was born in
In 1953 Andry won a
Decca
The ballet company disbanded within a year of Andry's joining. Walker took up an appointment as a recording producer with Decca Records,[5] and on his recommendation, Andry was recruited to assist Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof.[6] Andry joined the company in 1953 and his first sessions as a recording producer were with Peter Katin in a Liszt recital disc in March 1954.[7] In the same year he worked with Gérard Souzay, Sir Adrian Boult, Wilhelm Kempff, Boyd Neel, Julius Katchen and Benjamin Britten. In July and August of that year he supervised the recording, seldom out of the catalogues since, of Edith Sitwell, Peter Pears and the English Opera Group ensemble conducted by Anthony Collins in Sitwell and Walton's Façade.[7] Andry himself described this recording as "perhaps the most famous of Walton's popular entertainment."[8]
During the rest of his time with Decca, Andry produced recordings by conductors including
In the days before
EMI
In 1956, Olof left Decca to join its rival
After working successfully in the recording studio in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Andry was promoted to a senior executive position when the older generation of EMI executives retired. Legge left in 1964, and after the retirement of David Bicknell as manager of EMI's International Artistes Department, Andry succeeded to the post. He was later appointed head of EMI's International Classical Division, responsible not only for the group's international recording programme but for its worldwide classical marketing.[5] In The Independent, Lewis Foreman wrote in 2010:
At EMI he was one of the major world figures of the classical recording industry during the great days of the major companies, and he worked with all the leading artists of the day, including such conductors as Bernstein, Giulini, Haitink, Jansons, Karajan, Kempe, Klemperer, Muti, Previn, Rattle and Tennstedt. It is invidious to mention singers and soloists for fear of omitting an illustrious name, but they included Barenboim, Caballé, Callas, Carreras, Domingo, du Pre, de los Ángeles, Nigel Kennedy, Michelangeli, Pavarotti, Perlman, Pollini, Rostropovich, Schwarzkopf and Kiri Te Kanawa.[5]
Among Andry's most celebrated achievements was to persuade the Soviet authorities to allow David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich to record Beethoven's Triple Concerto for EMI in 1969, and capping this by securing Karajan to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic for the recording.[2] In The Gramophone, Edward Greenfield wrote, "Even in these days of star-studded casting on record, the line-up for this latest version of the Triple Concerto is nothing short of breathtaking".[15] Forty years later, The Times said, "even today the performance still elicits superlatives."[2]
Later years
In 1988, Andry left EMI to become president of
Andry retired from the record business in 1996. In 2008 he published a volume of memoirs, Inside the Recording Studio – Working with Callas, Rostropovich, Domingo, and the Classical Élite.[1]
Andry died of cancer in St John's Hospice in St John's Wood, London, at the age of 83.
Personal life and honours
Andry 's first marriage, to Rosemary Macklin, was dissolved and in 1965 he married Christine Sunderland. There were two sons from the first marriage and a daughter from the second.[1]
Andry was known for his charity work. Among the causes he worked for were the Music Therapy Charity and the Australian Music Foundation in London.
Notes
- ^ a b c d e "Peter Andry", The Daily Telegraph, 24 January 2011
- ^ a b c d e "Peter Andry – Unfailingly modest record producer who presided over brilliant performances from Callas, Richter, Klemperer and Karajan",The Times, 16 February 2011
- ^ Millington, Barry. "Obituary: Peter Andry", The Guardian, 25 January 2011
- ^ Andry, pp. 73–75
- ^ a b c d e f g Foreman, Lewis. "Peter Andry", The Independent, 24 January 2011
- ^ a b c d Blyth, Alan. "Peter Andry", The Gramophone, October 1972, p. 41
- ^ a b c d e f Stuart, Philip. Decca Classical, 1929-2009 Retrieved 10 January 2012.
- ^ Andry, p. 82
- ^ Andry, p. 12
- ^ Culshaw, p. 46
- ^ Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, p. 843
- ^ Culshaw, p. 47
- ^ Hope-Wallace, Philip. "Wagner – Der Fliegende Holländer", The Gramophone, May 1956, p. 57
- ^ Blyth, Alan. "Wagner – Siegfried", Gramophone, March 2006, p. 95
- ^ Greenfield, Edward, "Beethoven Triple Concerto", The Gramophone, September 1970, p. 20
References
- Andry, Peter; Tony Locantro (2008). Inside the Recording Studio – Working with Callas, Rostropovich, Domingo, and the Classical Élite. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6026-1.
- Culshaw, John (1967). Ring Resounding. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-11800-9.
- OCLC 474839729.