Felix Aprahamian

Music lover who celebrated French composers

In a way, Felix Aprahamian, who has died aged 90, was an amateur, a lover. A lover of music; also of men and, occasionally, women. He loved the good things of life, but music came first - listening to it, printed copies of it, books on it, and those who made it.

Felix was born in London. His father was a carpet dealer, an immigrant Armenian, his mother an adorable rotund lady, a great cook and a good mother to her three children, Francis, Florence and Felix. Felix was her favourite: she indulged him, and he repaid her by staying with her; in fact he lived in the same house in Muswell Hill for 85 years, the house that he called, with Poe-faced humour, the House of Usher.

Indeed, the house nearly did fall once, when Felix, desperate for more space for the ever-increasing amount of books and music, fitted up the loft for more of the same. Cracks appeared in the structure, and the loft had to be emptied.

It was an ordinary double-fronted building, but inside it was a shrine where Music was worshipped. There were side altars devoted to tropical fish, and the small garden was exotic, with rare plants and more fish in pools. The music room had an organ, inherited from the organist André Marchal and transplanted from Hendaye, in the French Basque country, for the use of the blind organist David Liddle, a protege of Felix's.

There were also two pianos, on which the likes of the composers Olivier Messiaen, Benjamin Britten, Francis Poulenc and soloist Monique Haas had played, as well as Felix himself - he would regale you with Ravel's Ondine at the drop of a hat. He would also point out a plane tree in front of the house which Poulenc had baptised one day in an emergency.

Felix's education was self-administered rather than academic. His father had got him a job in the metal market, but already at 17 Felix was pouring his energies into being assistant secretary of the Organ Music Society. His three passions at that time were the organ, French music and Frederick Delius (he visited the old composer at Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris).

When I first met Felix, he was concert director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. During those precarious war years the programmes had to be popular, but sometimes Felix was allowed his head, and he would spread himself in the empty dress circle, following the scores of Debussy, Delius and Bax. In the 1940s he was effervescent, and if his activities and behaviour had appeared in a novel, you would say it was overwritten. He lived in a constant flurry and bustle, rushing from one place to another, finding the best food in those days when the bill could not exceed five shillings; it was lunch with Michael Tippett, tea with William Walton, dinner with conductors Victor de Sabata or Charles Munch, and sometimes consultations with Sir Thomas Beecham about Felix going to Paris to engage singers for recordings.

Felix knew where to shop, where to find rare books or scores. He was remarkable especially for his generosity: he helped dozens of young musicians, gave them advice, made introductions for them, gave them books and scores, fed them and sometimes put them up at the House of Usher. Nothing was too much trouble. The general impression was of somebody who was a mixture of characters from Proust and PG Wodehouse.

His finest achievement was that he made British music lovers more familiar with French music. Working with Toni Mayer, cultural attaché at the embassy in London, Felix organised over a hundred concerts for the Free French during the second world war. Not just Debussy and Ravel, but also Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Roussel, Florent Schmitt, not forgetting Baroque masters such as Rameau and Couperin, through Berlioz to all of Les Six and on to Messiaen. For the audiences it was like an education that had previously been manquée .

Felix left his mark in fastidious details: a stylist when it came to the programme notes and the design of flyaways and posters - even the tickets looked elegant. The artists were the divine soprano Maggie Teyte in the Indian summer of her career, tenor Peter Pears and Britten, the Zorian Quartet, piano accompanist Gerald Moore, and Tippett with his Morley College Choir (Felix sometimes sang bass with them). Later, with the liberation of Paris, baritones Pierre Bernac and Gérard Souzay, cellist Pierre Fournier, pianists Yvonne Lefebure, Poulenc, Messiaen and his eventual wife Yvonne Loriod - these were nuits alcyoniennes, to coin a phrase.

From 1946 to 1984, Felix joined United Music Publishers, agents for most of the music publishers in Paris. He also became second string critic for the Sunday Times (1948-89), and was notable for his purple patches when inspired, enthusing about much and deprecating the mandarins' cheers for atonal music and the sort of pieces that encouraged instrumentalists to make squeaks and burps that previously they had tried not to make when learning to play.

As time went on, Felix somewhat blotted his book by being late with his copy and even on occasion reviewing performances by artists who had dropped out at the last moment. He ignored his friends' demands that he write an autobiography, because he could not fashion his anecdotes and recollections in such a way that the events and personalities came off the page.

One memory, as he often told it, was how he nearly met Peter Warlock on the steps of the British Museum. In these stories Felix could be a bit far-fetched. But then Felix was far-fetched. His last years, sadly, were plagued by strokes and loss of hearing, but he could still recall a life devoted to music and musicians; and in which he was honoured by the French government, president of the Delius Society, and held in great affection by all of his many friends.

· Felix Aprahamian, music critic, organiser and publicist, born June 1 1914; died January 15 2005