Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1995, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a music writer and critic. Now 80 he lives in a large house in

North London surrounded by memories of the great names of 20th century music.

Pulank peed against a tree in the front garden. Messier is a signatory to the visitor's book,

and so the story goes,

Nigel Kennedy was conceived in the front room.

The man at the center of these musical connections

worked for Sir Thomas Beecham and the Sunday Times

where he was a music critic for more than 40 years. His work, his knowledge, and the

range of people he's known and encouraged make him one of this country's musical institutions.

He is Felix Aprehamian.

A lifetime Felix devoted to music and to musicians and to this house in Muswell Hill where you've lived practically all your life

since the age of four. Presumably you could never leave it because it's so full of

these musical memories. Well for purely practical reason I couldn't leave it because it's absolutely full of books, music, things I've needed. I've always had my working tools there, you see.

No, I'm very happy with it and but describe it to me I get the impression it's almost a museum there are so many

musical treasures in it it's not a museum really. Things are locked in bookcases and

cupboards but it doesn't look so unfriendly. It's really lived in. But you've got a huge

and rather special organ in the front room I think.

Pipes and all?

The organ is the chamber organ that my friend Andre Marshall, the blind organist, had at his

country villa in Ande, Ande Di Plage.

...