grandfather's bust stands in our studio - but why?

In our family, my grandfather was the elderly gentleman who had done great deeds you did not mention, as surely everybody knew he was famous. Quite some time later I realised that indeed only a select group of record aficionados or lovers of eclectic operas „knew“ about his music.  Thus ensued my search for a man whom I came to think of as the ultimate interpreter. (Mariana Doughty)

My grandfather ..helped form the musical taste of the British during the golden age of the gramophone record. He had returned penniless from Russia with a wife and two kids in tow in 1918 and within five years he was recording the great artists of the twenties, many of whom trusted him for the length of their careers behind the microphone. As a boy he sang for Queen Victoria, as a man he convinced Casals to record – it was he who produced the legendary Bach Suites recordings of Pablo Casals! He loved opera and convinced the English public to love Russian opera too.

Lawrance Collingwood was a student of Alexander Glasunov in St.Petersburg when he met the young Anna Koenig, a Russian of German descent. During the revolution they emigrated via Finland to Great Britain, where Lawrance was not only instrumental in organising recordings for His Master’s Voice (HMV) and enabling the transformation of Sadler’s Wells into the English National Opera, but an earnest composer and above all a humble man with a great heart, helping not a few Russians to settle in Britain, among them Nikolaj Medtner.