"…will provide enlightening reading not only to all people associated with music, but also to the general reader who wants to know how destiny and history impinge on the human being." - Yehudi Menuhin in the Foreword.
MUSIC PUBLISHING AND PATRONAGE
C.F. Peters: 1800 to the Holocaust
Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen
SOME EXTRACTS FROM EARLY REVIEWS:
"….Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen’s account of her family’s firm, the relationships between C.F. Peters and many great composers, and a hundred and one other matters of fascinating importance to the music lover, has here produced a volume which many will find difficult to put down. Over and above the rich tapestry of musical, social and commercial history, which this book chronicles, runs the family history. History made more astonishingly gripping in its conclusion by the horrendous fate meted out to the great Henri Hinrichsen (the author’s grandfather) in Auschwitz at the age of 74 by the Nazis…." / "…Such a story requires four qualities in the telling: A fluent and profound knowledge of German; an equal knowledge of English; that the author be musical; and that the author knows the family history intimately. Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen possesses these qualities in full measure and the result is a very moving achievement which should be in the library of anyone who regards themselves as a true music-lover…….The book’s production is excellent…….The final pages must have been particularly difficult for the author to write – but they are beautifully and poignantly done. The book is urgently and strongly recommended.
Robert Matthew-Walker. ‘International Record Review’. June 2000.
"…..This powerful story is told comprehensively in this excellent book; and it also reveals many characters in the music world, including Max Reger, Edvard Grieg, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, Sigfrid Karg-Elert and Karl Straube…/...It tells a story that is much more than just music publishing, more even than music generally. It tells of the growth of a family business into a world leader, and how such a firm was all but toppled in the most savage of periods in the last millennium."
Simon Fitzgerald. ‘The Organ’ May-July 2000.
"…..This is a fascinating account of the business and artistic aspects of music publishing within the social structure of the times in Germany, and especially in Leipzig, with emphasis on the role played by those who were able to offer their patronage to such achievements. / Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen gives an interesting account of the difficulties encountered by composers’ sensitivities or with musicians’ complex personalities. She poignantly describes the sufferings of the Hinrichsen family and of other Jews when Hitler came to power in 1933….."
Carola Grindea. ‘Piano Journal’. Spring 2000.
"….Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen , has written an excellent history of the publishing house and its two Jewish proprietors, who dedicated their lives to the publication of great music and to endowing musical institutions for the citizens of Leipzig. / But it is the details she gives of personal relationships between publisher and composer which prove the most fascinating….."…
Carole Rosen. ‘Jewish Chronicle’. April 14, 2000
"This is the inspiring, but, later horrifying history of the great German music publishing house, C.F. Peters, Leipzig…." Peter Johnson. ‘British German Review’. April 2000.
"….her prose itself becomes eloquent in the book’s grim final chapters…."
Bayan Northcote. ‘BBC Music Magazine’. June 2000.
"The author has several generations of music publishing in her veins, and in this substantial and important book – a true labour of love – she has amply repaid her debt and gratitude to her distinguished forbears. The title being somewhat forbidding, I approached it with some trepidation, fearing that Irene’s book might prove worthy but heavy going. I need have had no such qualms….." / "The facts alone would have made fascinating and informative reading; what lifts this book onto an entirely different plane, however, is the enormous amount of autograph correspondence and other documentary material which Irene has had at her disposal, which she has selected and organised with consummate skill. " / "…I cannot recommend it too strongly. Handsomely printed and bound, the book is meticulously researched and stylishly written……in all significant respects it is a triumph…."
Beresford King-Smith. ‘The Baton’ July 2000.
"….Music Publishing and Patronage is well written, clearly organised, and is remarkably and all the more tellingly cool in its later pages, when a horrific story is quietly, even bleakly recorded. As a source document of the founding and subsequent rise of an eminent publishing company it is invaluable. One can only congratulate Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen on maintaining the high family standards. The book is excellent value for its price, just as were the famous earlier Peters Edition publications that served Grieg and others so well; and its handsome appearance and production values will have three immediately preceding generations of her distinguished family – Peters men all – applauding her from the Elysian fields." Dr. Lionel Carley. ‘The Delius Society Journal’. Spring 2000.