David and I are attending Simon Majaro’s memorial service this evening (25th June). He died on 1st April 2025 at the age of 95, but where some people are old when they’re 20, Simon and his wife Pamela, who died in 2016, had such lively, enquiring minds that they will be forever young in my memory.
A former professor of marketing and a philanthropist, Simon founded the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust with Pamela in 1998 with the aim of developing the next generation of chamber music lovers and players. The charity, which is still going today, brings chamber music to schools and parts of the country without much or any music education through annual concerts. It also provides free tickets for chamber music concerts for young people aged 8 to 25. Attending a schools concert in 2008, I remember being impressed that they never talked down to the children, but really engaged them. The Majaros were awarded MBEs in 2011 for their work.
David and I met Simon and Pamela in 2008, not long after we launched Bachtrack. They welcomed us into their musical lives from the start. We weren’t young when we started the website, but we did have so much to learn about the classical music industry.
Simon was instrumental in supporting Bachtrack’s early efforts in concert reviewing. David, initially nervous about putting himself forward as the sole judge of a concert, worked together with Simon on the site’s earliest reviews in 2010. By 2012, having recruited an army of writers, we were publishing so many reviews that we took on a full-time editor, Paul Kilbey. In 2025, we passed the milestone of 25,000 reviews published.
And just to show how things go full circle, last year Simon asked David to judge the Cavatina Intercollegiate Chamber Music Competition staged at Wigmore Hall. Was that his final blessing? We will never know, but believe me, by the time David judged the competition, he had learnt every note and recording of the work to be performed – Beethoven’s Piano Trio in E flat, Op.70 No.2.
Simon was such a force for good in classical music, commissioning new works and providing steady work for several quartets in the UK, where support for artists is frequently lacking. He was also a very charming man with a lovely sense of humour. I miss him already.
