The promoter the critics love to hate: an interview with Raymond Gubbay

When Raymond Gubbay left school, he was articled to an accountant’s firm. Fascinated by opera and depressed at the prospect of life as a Golders Green beancounter, he wriggled out of it in a matter of months, and into an assistant’s job at Pathé Newsreels. Sensing that newsreels had a looming expiry date, he asked Arnold Wesker (a family friend) to wangle him an interview with Victor Hochhauser, Britain’s leading promoter of mass-market classical concerts. Hochhauser sat behind a desk in his office above a fridge shop in Kensington and asked the 17-year-old Raymond three questions. Where did you go to school? Are you a Jewish boy? And can you start on Monday?

Six decades later, even three questions feel unnecessary. Raymond Gubbay is a brand; classical music’s equivalent of easyJet or Toby Carvery. You’ll have seen the newspaper ads and the Tube posters. ‘Four Seasons by Candlelight’. ‘Madame Butterfly at the Royal Albert Hall’.