Walter Legge

Harry Walter Legge (1 June 1906 – 22 March 1979) was an influential English classical record producer, most notably for EMI. His recordings include many sets later regarded as classics and reissued by EMI as "Great Recordings of the Century". He worked in the recording industry from 1927, combining this with the post of junior music critic of The Manchester Guardian. He was assistant to Sir Thomas Beecham at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and in World War II played a role in bringing music to the armed forces and civilians.

After the war, Legge founded the Philharmonia Orchestra and worked for EMI as a recording producer. In the 1960s he quarrelled with EMI and resigned. He attempted to disband the Philharmonia in 1964, but it continued as an independent body without him. After this he had no permanent job, and confined himself to giving masterclasses with, and supervising the recordings of, his second wife, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Legge was born in Shepherds Bush, London, where his father was a tailor. He was educated at the Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith. He excelled in Latin and French, but received no musical training. He left school at 16 and had no further formal education. Encouraged by his father he developed a taste for music, and Richard Wagner in particular, in pursuit of which he taught himself to read music and to speak German.

Legge first joined HMV in 1927, writing album and analytical notes and copy for the company's monthly retailing magazine, The Voice, but he caught the eye of the leading record producer, Fred Gaisberg, and was soon taking an active role in HMV recording procedures. Between 1933 and 1938 Legge also worked as a music critic for The Manchester Guardian.

In the pre-war years, Legge pioneered "subscription" recordings, by which the public were invited to pay in advance for their copies of future recordings, thus making it economically possible for EMI to make such "niche" but classic recordings as the songs of Hugo Wolf and the complete piano works of Beethoven (played by Artur Schnabel). Another famous pre-war recording supervised by Legge, which has been reissued on LP and CD, was Sir Thomas Beecham's set of The Magic Flute, made in Berlin in 1937. Beecham invited Legge to join him at Covent Garden as assistant artistic director. Given a free hand by Beecham he engaged Richard Tauber, Jussi Björling, Maria Reining, Hilde Konetzni, Julius Patzak and Helge Roswänge in their Covent Garden debuts.

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