The arts supremo, biographer and music critic, who herself studied cello with János Starker, has died aged 79
Annette Morreau, influential new music champion and founder of the UK Arts Council’s Contemporary Music Network (CMN) has died aged 79.
Morreau was born on 4 February 1946, the daughter of Renée and Beryl, née Blunt. Beryl was a musician who had been the violist in the all-female Macnaghten Quartet.
Morreau herself played the cello and studied music at Dartington College and Durham University. In 1966 she was the first woman to win a joint Durham/Indiana University scholarship to study at the music school in Bloomington, US. There she was one of a few select pupils of cellist János Starker. However after what she described ‘a couple of alarming lessons’ with him, she decided against a career as a solo cellist.
On her return to the UK she joined BBC Radio and then the Arts Council. She founded the CMN in 1970, which had the aim of taking performances of new music beyond London to venues all over the UK.
Morreau left the CMN in 1987 and after a brief period as commissioning editor for Channel 4, produced music-based programmed for the BBC, before becoming a music critic for The Independent.
Morreau was a distant relative of the celebrated Austrian cellist Emmanuel Feuermann (1902-42). She wrote his biography, which was published in 2002.
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