Will Waspe's Whispers
Those who note such things will have noted that a new concert artistes' agency was licensed last week: the Horovitz Management. Its appearance may have been especially interesting to the long-established Harold Holt Ltd, for until a few months ago Hannah Horovitz, who bosses the new agency, was the Holt agency's live-wire ace negotiator. In the late stages of that association her talents had been largely channelled to the promotion of the Holt subsidiary, Wigmore Cassettes, a videocassettes enterprise that most would see as a long-term rather than an immediate profits prospect. It never really got off the ground. Miss Horovitz tried and ex-Daily Mail editor Arthur Brittenden tried. Miss Horovitz left, then Brittenden left. (He is now, of course, back in Fleet Street with the Sun.) No one will say that the partings were other than entirely friendly. Nevertheless three star Holt artistes — the glamorous Israeli pianist Ilana Vered, the American conductor Jorge Mester and 'the magic flautist' Jean-Pierre Rampal — are now with Hannah Horovitz.
Who needs enemies?
Pretty Gillian Widdicombe, one of the Financial Times's music critics and sometime of these pages, has been so frequently seen in the social company of muchmarried conductor Andre Previn that their names are inevitably linked on that ominous 'just good friends' basis.
There is clearly more to their friendship than Miss Widdicombe's admiration for Previn's professional skills. " Andre Previn," she wrote not so long ago, "is the principal conductor of the LSO. Why?" She went on to elaborate: " Previn's traffic loes not always obey his signals, and when the crunch comes the result can be astonishingly untidy for an orchestra with the LSO's virtuoso response "; and "Rashly he played a Mozart piano concerto at the Festival Hall. Unfortunately he seemed to get lost in the slow movement . . ."
Travel notes
Despite the long-running success of his comedy, How the Other Half Loves, playwright Alan Ayckbourn has never been especially happy with what the London production — and Robert Morley in particular — did to his work. And he still insists on having his plays premiered by the Theatre-in-the-Round at Scarborough, and making the managers travel in pursuit of the rights. His latest, Absurd Persons Singular, opens on June 26 — on which date at least four West End promoters will come face to face in that faraway foyer.
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