A list of record credits that will never be matched
mainWe are saddened to hear of the death of Eve Edwards, formidable Executive Producer at Philips Classics who looked after Neville Marriner, Mitsuko Uchida and many more.
Take a look at her credits here.
A 1956 Hungarian refugees, she started out as recording c oordintor for A&R chief Erik Smith before working with Antal Dorati on the Haydn operas.
She then took charge of Rossini and early Verdi, leaving no note unturned.
Costa Pilavachi, last head of Philips, says: ‘Eve was spectacularly efficient, capable, unafraid of everybody and respected and liked by all.’
She is survived by her husband Philip.
Eve Edwards with Plácido Domingo and Mirella Freni for a Philips recording of the Early Verdi Series.
The list in question does raise an incidental question : why is Kurt Sanderling already so forgotten?
Great question. Part of the answer is that he never had a long term relationship with a major label. For this I am among those guilty as charged. I do believe he recorded extensively with the East German state label V.E.B. Deutsche Schallplaten with his Berlin Symphony and some of these were reissued by Berlin Classics after the fall of the wall. You should look for his Brahms symphony cycle which is superb.
His Shostakovich recordings are also fantastic and got the stamp of approval from the composer himself. I have several Berlin Classics CDs at home but as far as I can tell, these re-releases were all made in his lifetime and nothing was reissued after he died* (compare with Bernstein, Karajan, even Celibidache….) Sanderling was a bridge between the Russian and the German orchestral culture (like Gergiev would happily want to be) but he is not remembered as such. That’s a bit of a shame.
*I may be wrong, or ignorant
No, I agree with you. He was a sort of « bridge » as you say. Sanderling told me that he conducted many of the second performances of Shostakovich’s symphonies, after Mravinsky had done the premieres. He spent much of his earlier years first in Moscow as a répétiteur and then in Leningrad as Mravinsky’s number two. He was evacuated to Novosibirsk along with the Leningrad Philharmonic at the height of the siege. He also told me how he ended up in the USSR. He was touring in Switzerland in 1934 when his father told him to not return to Germany. He tried to emigrate to the USA but failed. He also had an uncle in Moscow so he ended up there….he was a lovely person and a top conductor who was not interested in fame and its trappings.
Thank you for sharing all these memories! Are you in contact with his sons as well?
I see Thomas here and there but I have not seen the two younger ones and their mother Barbara for years.
Apart from the older one Thomas I am not in touch.