My friend Robert Avery, who has died aged 70 of Covid-19, ran his own travel company, Habsburg Heritage, which specialised in musical events in central Europe, Italy and Switzerland. Robert’s knowledge of culture was complemented by an enthusiasm for food and wine. There were wine tastings and museums as well as music. The trips were like house parties, at which many travellers made lifelong friends.
Robert was born in London. His mother, Sonia (nee Szajnbilit) had come to Britain aged 19 from Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) in 1939; her parents, having sent her on ahead, were later killed in the concentration camps. His father, David Avery, was a family doctor. Robert was educated at Leyton county high school.
He went on to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read history, graduating in 1971. Fluent in German and French, thanks to frequent family visits to Austria, Germany and France, he went to work for the Anglo-Austrian Society, which had been set up by Jewish refugees for cultural and educational links; he was involved in bringing the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Boys’ Choir to Britain. At the society, he met Jane Fraser, who had studied piano in Vienna. They married in 1977. Jane was to be the highly competent administrator of their lives.
They started their own company in 1990, organising trips to central Europe: Wagner in Budapest, opera in Vienna, the Haydn festival in Eisenstadt – to which Robert was a special adviser – the Schubertiade, opera and music in Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig. It was typical of Robert’s energy and enthusiasm that when Eisenstadt put on a three-day festival playing all Haydn’s string quartets with about 10 different quartets participating, only Robert’s company offered its participants a chance to hear all – a mere five or six concerts a day. It was stupendous. We first met in a ticket queue at a concert, when Robert pressed a free ticket on me and told me to travel with Habsburg Heritage; so I did.
Robert and Jane lived in Dulwich, south London, in a house filled with flowers and books. He was a regular at Covent Garden and attended many other cultural events, sometimes several in a day. Robert had not retired and there were trips planned to the Schubertiade and to the Mahler Festival next year in Leipzig.
Robert is survived by Jane and their daughters, Rachel and Ali.
