Annabelle Whitestone

Annabelle Whitestone, Baroness Weidenfeld, (born October 1944),[1]daughter of Cmdr. Nicholas Whitestone RN and Lorna Birkenshaw Whitestone, is an English former concert manager[2] working with classical music impresarios including Ingpen & Williams, Ibbs and Tillett, Wilfrid Van Wyck, the English Bach Festival and Conciertos Daniel in Madrid [3]

Annabelle with George Weidenfeld, 2001

The Polish-American pianist Arthur Rubinstein credited Whitestone with assisting the careers of two of his protégés,[4] François-René Duchâble and Janina Fialkowska.

In 1977, the 90-year-old Rubinstein left his wife Nela Młynarska after 45 years of marriage for Whitestone[5] and lived with her in Geneva, Switzerland,[6] until he died in 1982. Whitestone helped Rubinstein to write the second volume of his autobiography, My Many Years, which he dedicated to her. Rubinstein's original collaborator, Tony Madigan, whom he met in Marbella,[7] transcribed the first phase of the book.[8]

Whitestone convened Remembering Rubinstein,[9] a day of talks and concerts at the Royal Academy of Music on 22 January 2008,[10] to honour the pianist "who once sold as many records as rock stars and was as much at ease in the White House as he was with his chums Picasso and Charlie Chaplin."[9] Lady Weidenfeld is a member of the advisory board of the Jerusalem Music Centre and the Jerusalem Foundation, a member of the board of directors of the Arthur Rubinstein International Music Society, and a member of the Honorary Advisory Board of the Jewish Music Institute SOAS. Lady Weidenfeld was also the manager of the legendary late concert pianist Menahem Pressler and was his partner from 2016 until his death in 2023.

Annabelle Whitestone was married to British publisher Lord Weidenfeld from 1992 until he died in 2016.[11] She later began a relationship with pianist Menahem Pressler, whom she had known since 1966, which lasted until his death in 2023.[12]

References
  1. Harvey Sachs "Rubinstein a Life" p. 84.
  2. Harvey Sachs, p. 362 ff., Rubinstein: A Life. Grove Press (1995). Hardcover first edition: ISBN 0-8021-1579-9, ISBN 978-0-8021-1579-9. "Annabelle Whitestone had been educated in a convent and had had musical training. She had first heard Rubinstein play—Beethoven's Fourth Piano concerto with Barbirolli—in London in 1961, when he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Her career in concert management had begun with the firm of Ingpen & Williams, and she had also worked for Ibbs & Tillett before she joined Van Wyck's forces. Not many weeks after her first encounter with Rubinstein, she left Van Wyck, at the suggestion of Henryk Szeryng—one of the artists whom she had managed—and went to Madrid to work for Ernesto de Quesada's son Ricardo, who was gradually taking over the direction of the Spanish branch of the Daniel agency.
    "The Quesadas, who had befriended Annabelle and who were eager to please their most celebrated client, assigned her to look after him on his Spanish trips and allowed her to disappear at a moment's notice when he summoned her: she would fly to Paris or elsewhere, whenever he was alone and free for a day or two. "I had a full time job in Madrid, and a very serious one," she said. "We dealt with all the biggest artists—Arrau, Menuhin, everybody—and they were very much my responsibility; they would arrive, and I would suddenly say to Ricardo, 'Look, I'm going to Paris the day after tomorrow.' He never made any objection. I don't know what I would have done without the Quesadas as friends." According to Annabelle, the only person besides the Quesadas who knew what was going on was Louis Bender, the trusty Hurok employee who looked after Rubinstein on his American tours."
  3. Harvey Sachs Rubinstein: A Life
  4. Rubinstein, Arthur (1980). My Many Years. Bloomsbury: Hamish Hamilton, 1987 edition. p. 601. ISBN 0-241-12355-0.
  5. From Publishers Weekly "In the last decade of his life, he began a liaison with a young English concert promoter, Annabelle Whitestone (now married to British publisher Sir George Weidenfeld)."
  6. Michael Walsh (3 January 1983). "A Song to Remember". Time. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
  7. Sachs, Harvey (1995). Rubinstein: A Life. New York City: Grove Press. pp. 362 ff. ISBN 0-8021-1579-9. Tony Madigan, the grandson of Estrella Boissevain, an old friend of the Rubinsteins ...
  8. AbeBooks. "My Many Years book description". The volume was dictated when the author was at the mature age of ninety-two; transcribed in large part by Tony Madigan, and the latter portion by Annabelle Whitestone.
  9. Norman Lebrecht (19 December 2007). "Great passion for the piano player". Evening Standard. Archived from the original on 31 December 2007. Retrieved 23 February 2008.
  10. Tom Service (12 January 2008). "Music Matters". BBC Radio 3.
  11. Elizabeth Grice (24 February 2005). "In each of us, there's an element of snobbery – Interview with George Weidenfeld". The Daily Telegraph. I admire my wife's character, her subtlety in responses and reactions, her shrewd sense of reality – shrewder than mine.
  12. Millington, Barry (31 May 2023). "Menahem Pressler obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
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