Ray Minshull

Raymond Phillip Minshull, record producer: born Birmingham 27 March 1934; musical assistant, Decca Record Company 1957-67, Manager of Classical Division 1967-94, executive vice-president 1981-94; married 1962 Mary Quinlan (one daughter); died Chichester, West Sussex 16 February 2007.

Ray Minshull spent his entire working life with one record company - Decca - where he succeeded the celebrated John Culshaw as chief producer for the Classical Division. He was the architect of a pre-eminent catalogue of classical music recordings, with a remarkable portfolio of the most prestigious artists of his day.

He was born in 1934 at Edgbaston, Birmingham, though the family moved to King's Norton when he was three and he was evacuated to his grandparents at Rugeley, Staffordshire, on the outbreak of war. His father was an electrical engineer and general manager of the power cables division of BICC. Minshull recalled that even when very young he was interested in the family collection of 78s.

In 1943 he went to Tettenhall College, a Headmasters' Conference boarding school, where his musical interest blossomed and he played piano, organ and flute. Eight years later, he went to Sheffield University graduating BA in languages and music and then BMus. After National Service as a junior officer in the RASC he joined Decca in 1957 and remained there until he retired 37 years later.

Minshull remembered he started "being a general dogsbody . . . learning how to make really good cups of tea". His first recording was of Joan Sutherland a year before her revelatory Lucia at Covent Garden, singing two arias from Alcina for the L'Oiseau Lyre label. His first recording of a complete opera was also Alcina with Sutherland in 1962. Dame Joan and her husband Richard Bonynge remember him in warm terms, finding him "an excellent producer".

Decca's opera recording programme in the 1960s was very ambitious. Minshull was particularly associated with these operas, recorded with stellar casts, and after John Culshaw's unexpected departure from Decca to the BBC in 1967 Minshull succeeded him at the early age of 33, over the claims of more senior colleagues. Minshull recalled how he was called from a recording session in Rome to Decca's Director of Recordings, Maurice Rosengarten in Zurich, and offered the job of Manager, Classical Division. Culshaw commented in his autobiography:

It was the right decision. Only a very cool and assured head could counter-balance his [Rosengarten's] impetuosity, and, no matter what the crisis, Ray Minshull was incapable of working himself into a flap.

He was a very reluctant performer, though in his early days at Decca, as Culshaw's assistant, he found himself by force of circumstance the organist in Herbert von Karajan's recording of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, later used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Later, his daughter tells me, he might, very occasionally, in the domestic circle be persuaded to play the piano, his party pieces being "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and Country Gardens performed in a succession of keys.

Minshull was not an outgoing personality in an industry of extrovert characters, and increasingly he was regarded as an elder statesman of the record industry, a figure of the old school, who by his coolness of manner might have seemed remote. But, by his insistence on the highest standards and his great business acumen, he was utterly reliable. This trait stood him in good stead in tricky negotiations with musical unions on both sides of the Atlantic; in the United States by quiet and patient diplomacy he resolved a deadlock that had adversely affected recording contracts for some time.

All of a piece with his personality was his pipe smoking, which he used as a definite working tool in difficult discussions. Former colleagues remember a practical joke played on him during a recording session in Montreal. They filled the bottom of his pipe with match heads, and when he lit up there was an unexpected leap of flame, which startled the soloist and singed Minshull's eyebrows. He remained imperturbable. His pipe was his undoing, however; he eventually died of mouth cancer.

In 1972 Minshull won a Grand Prix du Disque Mondiale for Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov conducted by Karajan with Nicolai Ghiaurov in the title role. Minshull fully espoused Decca's belief in exclusive artists. Among the pianists he championed were Vladimir Ashkenazy, Radu Lupu, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Pascal Rogé. Thibaudet acknowledged him as a major influence early in his career and remained a lifelong friend.

"For ages," Minshull recalled, "we were looking for a violinist." A charity concert in 1970 with the LSO and André Previn at which an unknown Kyung-Wha Chung appeared, followed by a demo tape, resulted in a quick decision that the hunt was over, and her first Decca recording followed in a few weeks. Among many others Minshull was hugely involved with developing Luciano Pavarotti's recording career, and a colleague recalled how good he was at managing the singer. When recording Turandot at Kingsway Hall in 1972 he put off asking Pavarotti to sing "Nessun Dorma" until the end of a session, and then succeeded in recording what became a world- famous track in one inspired take.

The decision of the chairman of Decca, Sir Edward Lewis, to sell the company resulted in negotiations in which Minshull played a significant role. Lewis died before they were concluded and early in 1980 the company was bought by Polygram, who appointed Minshull executive vice-president of Decca, a role in which he continued for 14 years.

It was 1980, too, when Minshull went to Montreal and was impressed with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He was looking for a team to make modern recordings of the earlier Decca successes with Ernest Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. This resulted in a highly acclaimed series of recordings, notably of the French repertoire, and in fact his career was eventually crowned by Dutoit's acclaimed recording of Berlioz's Les Troyens, made in Montreal in 1993.

His daughter recalls the merging of family life and summer recording sessions, which resulted in holidays' being taken where her father was working. Increasingly this was in Montreal, where he made many friendships he greatly valued. Celebration of the partnership between Decca and Montreal included a concert and a dinner in Minshull's honour in 1993, the year he received an honorary doctorate from McGill University.

In 1994 he retired and wrote his autobiography. Meticulous as to documentation and dates but not revealing of the peccadillos of the musical giants with whom he had spent a lifetime, it remains unpublished.

Lewis Foreman