Fritz Spiegl goes on the block

The music collection of Liverpool flautist and humourist Fritz Spiegl (1926-2003) is up for sale at Sotheby’s next week, July 11.

It includes a letter in English from Mendelssohn, and plenty from more recent English composers and conductors.

Delius (photograph of the composer being read to in his garden by a German nurse); and autograph and typed letters signed by Vaughan Williams (2, and a drawing of the composer by Gwyneth Cole, 1946), Charles Hallé, Noel Rawsthorne (2), Humphrey Searle (2 autograph letters signed and an inscribed score of his Divertimento for flute and strings), George Grossmith (autograph musical quotation from ‘See me dance the polka’, 14 November 1895), Julius Harrison (autograph musical score of Worcester pieces for piano, signed, 1918 [?]), Carl Fuchs (Hallé’s violoncellist, photograph inscribed and signed, 10 August 1905), Marcel Dupré, Paderewski (signature), Bernstein (2 pages, on a correspondence card, 18 July 1985), Lennox Berkeley (2, one with a 3-note musical motif), Imogen Holst (autograph letters signed, 2 pages, 18 December 1974), Hans Gál (5 typed letters signed, and a score of his Huyton Suite, 1948), Hoddinott, Hugh Wood, Arthur Butterworth, Rosamund Strode, Han de Vries, Thea King, Manoug Parikian (2), Norman Del Mar (3), Colin Davis, Adrian Boult, Sir John Barbirolli (1 typed letter signed, and an inscribed and initialled sick bag), George Malcom (2), Eric Crozier, Carl Dolmetsch, Gerard Hoffnung (c.11, and one drawing and an inscribed first-edition copy of ‘The Hoffnung Music Festival’, 1956), Gabriel Howe (sister-in-law of the pianist Denis Matthews; 2 autograph letters signed, one of 17 pages with an anecdote about Malcom Sargent at the Albert Hall bus stop ‘plus 100% smashing young blonde’), Steve Race, John Amis, (2), Charles Mackerras (3), Niky ([Michael Isaacson] two autograph cartoons, one entitled ‘designs for Wagnerian heroine’), Rafael Kubelík (signed score of Mozart’s ‘Prague’ symphony, K.504), Hans Keller, Felix Aprahamian, Raymond Leppard, Christa Landon, Janet Craxton, Edward Heath (autograph letter signed, about ‘Das Land ohne Musik’, with Spiegl’s typed reply), Christopher Hogwood, Julian Lloyd Webber, Gillian Weir