David Drew
British writer, editor, music publisher, recording producer

Annual Records 1971-74
Advisor to Kurt Weill Foundation, Editor Tempo, Stravinsky commemorations (Boulez, etc),
'Music Today' (second series)

European Representative and Adviser, The Kurt Weill Foundation.

Appointments: (to 1980), BBC Music Advisory Committee; (to 1976) Music Panel, Arts Council of Great Britain, and Chair, British section of ISCM, and ACGB's Contemporary Music Network (director: Annette Morreau)

5 January: Death of Roberto Gerhard.

February/March: Appointed Editor of Tempo - the quarterly review of modern music published by Boosey & Hawkes - following the sudden and untimely death (in February) of its previous editor, Colin Mason.

6 April: Death of Stravinsky. The first issue of Tempo under D's editorship is a double issue in Stravinsky's memory. 'Canons and Epitaphs' are contributed by 17 composers:

Devises a concert at St John's Smith Square which intersperses the complete set of Canons and Epitaphs with relevant small-scale works by Stravinsky. With Stephen Plaistow, plans a 'Stravinsky Day', on the BBC's Music Programme, with each of the Canons and Epitaphs played at regular intervals and then, at the end of the day's broadcasting, recapitulated in a newly ordered sequence.

Adviser to Holland Festival (Director, Jo Elsendoorn), for Kurt Weill events including world-premiere of the recently discovered (by O.W. Neighbour) Recordare, and the post-war premieres of the Silbersee score in its full orchestral form, and of the complete Royal Palace, with the 1968 Schuller orchestration supplemented by Noam Sheriff (Schuller himself being unavailable). European Broadcasting Unioncommissions a version of Weill's partly lost Divertimento for a concert in January 1972. Collaboration with Christopher Shaw.

10 January: Ernest Bour conducts the soloists and orchestra of Sudwestfunk, Baden-Baden, in the premiere of the Shaw-Drew version of Weill's Divertimento.

Spring: Tempo 101 is a special issue dedicated to the opera Taverner by Peter Maxwell Davies, which is due to have its world premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 12 July - conductor, Edward Downes, producer Michael Geliot, designer Ralph Koltai. The issue of Tempo includes essays on the libretto, the music, and the historical Taverner, and is received with dismay by a senior executive at Boosey & Hawkes, who is not alone in considering the opera blasphemous, and asks whether a similar issue is planned in connection with the forthcoming production at Glyndebourne of The Visit of the Old Lady by Gottfried von Einem.

April-November: Agreements with the publishers of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians to supply six contributions to The New Grove (1980). Requests for three major contributions on French composers - which would have entailed a minimum of a year's work - are regretfully declined.

Summer: Publication of Twelve Questions for Leopold Spinner in Tempo. It marks the start of a lasting commitment to the composer and his music.

Autumn: Styrian Autumn Festival in Graz. With Dallapiccola to the premiere, in a nearby town, of his Commiato. Meetings there and in Graz with Witold Lutoslawski.

Advisory Board of the New Opera Company (until its merger with English National Opera, ca. 1983). During part of the same period, is a member of a ballet subcommittee at the Royal Opera House.

Introduced to D by Karl Miller, the Scottish writer and composer Malcolm (Calum) MacDonald is appointed Assistant Editor of Tempo. He will also afford invaluable assistance with the next productions in the Music Today recording series.

May: Commissioned by Lotte Lenya to establish and manage the European Office of the Kurt Weill Estate, with special responsibility for liaising with Universal Edition (Vienna and London) and Schott-Mainz, in the task of promoting their entire Weill catalogues throughout Europe. It is not a development unanimously supported by Lenya's New York circle. Within a year, Drew's formal proposal of a newly constituted Weill Foundation, with scholarly, archival, and promotional objectives, will be, in effect, suppressed. (His proposals - incorporated in a document of which no copy has been traced - are broadly modelled on Paul and Gertrude Hindemith's testamentary provisions regarding the Hindemith Foundation in Blonay, Switzerland, and the Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt.)

June: to Reykjavik for the 47th ISCM Festival. Hears Notturno by Helmut Lachenmann.

Summer: On holiday in Normandy, DD visits Honfleur and the birthplace of Erik Satie. It is a purely sentimental visit, without ulterior purposes (D will publish nothing further about Satie for several decades). Even as late as 1973, the imminent and extraordinary change in the composer's fortunes is hardly foreseeable. Bringing posthumous fame and media success to a hitherto marginal figure, it would immeasurably increase the commercial exploitation of his music.

7-11 November: Delivers a paper at the 'Theater im Exil 1933-45' conference and exhibition organised at the West Berlin Academy of Arts by Dr Walter Huder.

December: Writes for The New Grove an entry on Christopher Shaw, which will be published in an abbreviated form.

Second series of Music Today, on Decca's ARGO label is inaugurated by three new releases: Messiaen, Tippett; Maxwell Davies(Points and Dances from 'Taverner'/Second Fantasia on John Taverner's 'In Nomine'); Sessions, Musgrave, Riegger. The correspondence and meetings with Roger Sessions that had preceded the Music Today recordings will continue on a regular basis in the coming years.

Ulrich Eckhardt, Director of the Berliner Festwochen, engages D to advise the Festival in connection with two forthcoming Composer Portraits: Schoenberg (already planned for 1974) and Weill for 1975. For the latter D plans an integrated series of programmes, including a major orchestral concert and, it is hoped, several stage productions. At least one American musical is agreed to be a priority. The programme will also include several concert sequences and suites devised by D specially for the occasion. Lenya will be guest of honour, and is to give a song recital at the Academy of Arts, based on new Weill repertory.

New pieces by young composers are to be included. Discussions with Henze's composer-collective come to nothing - the collective interest is in Eisler, not Weill. Summer: First meeting with Robin Holloway, with a view to his writing a piece for the London Sinfonietta's projected concerts at the 1975 Festwochen. The piece that will take shape over the next twelve months, eventually to be entitled Concertino No.3, is subtitled 'Homage to Weill' but is in no respect an imitation or pastiche.

June: Attends 48th ISCM Festival in Rotterdam as representative of the British section. Hears for the first time music by Wolfgang von Schweinitz (Opus 6). Meetings with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam; discussion of Stravinsky à propos of Andriessen's work-in-progress with Elmer Schönberger (The Apollonian Clockwork).

July: Visits Lenya in New York, and discusses the Berlin programmes in detail. At her request meets Kim Kowalke, who has written to her concerning a proposed dissertation on Weill for Yale University. They discuss various approaches and specific topics. Their collaboration during the next 12 months will mark the beginning of a working relationship that continues to this day.

Is commissioned by Siegfried Unseld to edit for Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt) two paperback collections, with extensive introductions: ÜBER KURT WEILL, and WEILL: AUSGEWÄHLTE SCHRIFTEN. The deadlines for these two projects and for the Berlin programmes have to be reconciled with an urgent request from Universal Edition to review his (and Hugo F. Garten's) 1965 post-Neher revision of Die Bürgschaft, for a projected production in Zurich. Finding much that needs refurbishment, D returns to the libretto whenever time can be found for it, and will complete his work in a provisional bilingual form in 1975 - unfortunately too late to resume the collaboration with Garten.

Autumn:As sponsors of the Music Today series, the Gulbenkian Foundation have agreed that after the projected Birtwistle recording, the series will conclude with a 13th LP: one side, Dallapiccola, the other - subject to Dallapiccola's approval - music by an unpublished and more-or-less unknown composer. The composer decided upon is Christopher Shaw. In preparation for the recording, the BBC broadcast a performance of Shaw's Cantata, Peter and the Lame Man, conducted by Colin Davis.

Dallapiccola in London for Music Today recordings. Boulez conducts the recording of Birtwistle's The Triumph of Time for the same series.

December: First approach from Boosey & Hawkes regarding a senior executive position likely to be offered within the coming weeks. Begins work on the Weill entry for The New Grove - by far the longest of the six contributions.